Saniya Galimova put her husband on the first flight out of Russia and started packing up her life.
In the small bookstore she has since opened in Istanbul, where she lined up Russian and Ukrainian novels on the shelves, the 29-year-old remembers the panic that gripped them a year ago.
“Every day I wonder if I will be able to return (to Russia),” she confides.
“But not until this regime falls and the war continues.”
Saniya lived in the republic of Tatarstan, in central Russia; she and her husband found refuge on the shores of the Bosphorus with their little girl and their little dog.
Like them, nearly a million Russians fled their country after the outbreak of the invasion of Ukraine by Moscow on February 24, 2022, many to former Soviet republics or to Turkey, where they reconstitute here and there semblance of “little Russias”.
A century before them, White Russians fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had already found asylum in Constantinople.
In 2022, more than 150,000 Russians obtained residence permits in Turkey, according to official data.
Most were young, often graduates, artists or in the digital world, who had no intention of going to die in the trenches of Ukraine for a war they did not understand.
Saniya also did not want her 10-year-old daughter to grow up in that Russia: “Even children can no longer express opinions. They would put themselves and their parents in danger”.
A year after the start of the war, the Russian presence, in Istanbul and in several cities on the south coast of the country such as Antalya, can be read everywhere.
Posters written in Cyrillic characters announce Russian rap concerts or provide explanations for the use of public transport.
Others advertise real estate.
In Istanbul, Inzhu Mami, a 25-year-old Russian-speaking Kazakh, has become indispensable to her employer, a real estate agent from Esenyurt, an outlying district where towers are springing up like mushrooms.
“When (potential buyers) speak to someone who speaks their language, it creates a bond”, slips the young woman, all smiles.
Most of the Russians that Inzhu Mami sees are looking to invest their money in Istanbul’s bubbling real estate market.
They now represent 60% of the clientele, compared to 5% before the war, according to its manager Gül Gül.
“In general, they pay in cash”, explains Gül Gül, co-founder of “Golden Sign”.
Some of these exiles attempt to recreate the world they left behind, opening cafes or meeting places such as Saniya Galimova’s bookstore.
Alexandra Nikashina puts her artistic talents to good use in an ultra-trendy tattoo parlor in Karaköy.
“Of course I love Russia,” says the 29-year-old with decorated forearms. “But the idea of ??being there scares me.”
Native of Samara (central Russia), she had been living for years in Moscow where she rubbed shoulders with artists who were very invested in their field and unconcerned about the progress of the world.
Politics has caught up with her, and she now carefully avoids discussing the war with her parents back home.
“Our points of view are too divergent. But I realized that what matters most now is to preserve what I have – my family. she.
His roommate, Igor Irbitsky, agrees.
“I don’t talk politics with my friends back home,” says the 30-year-old graphic designer.
“The Russians I meet here are generally interesting people. I have a presumption of innocence towards them.”
Alexei Vyatkin sees things in a darker light.
On the first day of the war, the 36-year-old video producer drove to a central square in his city of St. Petersburg, expecting to find a protesting crowd.
But hardly anyone joined him.
“I was let down by people,” he says. Many of his friends were indifferent to the invasion, some even supporting it.
“It has become difficult for me to talk to them,” he pours out.
The idea of ??seeing his country again one day seems remote to him.
“I left a city, the one I would return to would no longer be the same,” he says. “The country has changed”.
21/02/2023 12:40:21 – Istanbul (AFP) © 2023 AFP
