Amir had been driving taxis in Tehran for over a decade. Before 2025, the city—despite its chaos—provided steady work. But in the past year something had changed. The streets were quieter, fuel was harder to find, and people rarely hailed a cab unless it was absolutely necessary.
Rumors rippled through the driver cafés and WhatsApp groups: people were heading west—to Bazargan, near the Turkey border—where they might make more money ferrying travelers out of an increasingly unstable homeland.
Tehran’s economy was bruised by sanctions, shortages, and now political turmoil. Violent crackdowns on protests had driven many families to consider leaving the country altogether, and some Iranians were making their way toward Turkey—though not a massive “influx,” according to Turkish officials who said there wasn’t unusual congestion at border crossings like Gürbulak or Kapıköy. Still, local drivers in eastern Turkey said they were seeing more Iranians than before, many saying they felt unsafe and were “forced to come.”
The Bazargan–Gürbulak crossing was historic: the busiest gateway between Iran and Türkiye, a conduit for trucks heading toward Europe. But freight traffic had been snarled for months by disputes over fuel taxes, leaving Iranian hauliers frustrated and border queues long.
Amir listened to these stories with a mixture of anxiety and hope. If people were fleeing Tehran, perhaps his income could rise not by running taxi fares inside the city—but by driving desperate passengers across the country toward the border. Some thought they might even reconnect families separated by unrest, or help them catch buses bound for Ankara or Istanbul.
On the morning he finally decided to go, the city was eerily quiet. Internet blackouts had flickered on and off for days, forcing some travelers to make short border trips just to update their messages and check flight prices. On the radio, a Kurdish trader spoke of the withdrawn airline flights to and from Iran; overland routes were now the only real option for many who wanted to leave.
Amir’s old Peugeot rattled out of Tehran before sunrise. The highway toward Tabriz was clogged in places with drivers abandoning their cars to queue at petrol pumps; fuel was rationed and expensive, and the roads felt heavier with fear than with traffic.
By the time he reached Bazargan, the sun was high. At the border post, there were lines of buses with hopeful faces—families clutching passports, young men staring at the Turkish checkpoint, and elderly women hugging their children. Some spoke of friends already in Van or Istanbul; others had run out of money weeks earlier. But unlike what sensational rumors sometimes claimed, there was no sudden explosion of refugees overwhelming the border gates. Turkish authorities were firm: visa-free entry was limited to normal tourism stays, and irregular crossings were met with strict control and occasional turnbacks into Iran.
Instead, what Amir saw was a simmering mix of fear, hope, and uncertainty. Small groups clustered near cafés in the no-man’s-land between countries, sharing stories. A Syrian or Iraqi trucker spoke of his own long wait for customs clearance years ago, and how that had shaped his life. Young Iranians on a bus talked quietly about finding work in Ankara. An older couple whispered that if the violence in Tehran spread, perhaps there would be a flood of people later—but for now it was a human trickle, not a flood.
Amir’s phone had no reliable signal—another side effect of the sporadic blackouts. But he had one fleeting thought as he started negotiating fares with a nervous family bound for Van: Maybe, just maybe, this crossing wouldn’t be Tehran’s end—but someone’s beginning.
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All names of people and organizations appearing in this story are pseudonyms
Turkey, Saudi Arabia could help resolve conflict around Iran — newspaper
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