Reform’s ‘Turkish Barbers Tip Line’ is not just racism. It’s a process of ‘othering’ with dangerous consequences.
Reform’s Home Affairs Spokesman, Zia Yusuf, announced on Thursday that, if elected, his party would pay members of the public whose tip-offs about businesses employing illegal workers lead to successful convictions. This financial reward to the public would be drawn from the astronomical fine the convicted business would have to pay.
So far, so good. Business shouldn’t employee illegal workers.
But Reform, being Reform, are seemingly unable to suggest legislation without giving it a racist or xenophobic slant. Yusuf referred to the rapid rise in “foreign barbershops” when he was justifying the need for such action, claiming barbershops, nail bars and vape shops are often “fronts for organised crime”.
It as if Reform spokesmen bring a ‘dog whistle’ with them to every public announcement.
That same day, Reform’s Treasury spokesperson, MP Robert Jenrick recorded a video in his constituency referring to “dodgy Turkish barbers,” a racist smear he’s used before. And he’s not the only person in Reform has seen fit to slur Turkish barbers.
In May of last year, the Deputy Leader, Richard Tice, claimed that Turkish barbers were “fronts for money laundering and drug money”, while the Party Leader, Nigel Farage, has repeatedly described them as “a racket”.
Perhaps they see fraud everywhere because it seems to surround them.
While taking the moral high ground against Turkish barbers, Richard Tice is being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, his firm is accused of avoiding paying £60,000 in taxes, and there is a police investigation into donations made to the party by a firm controlled by Tice.
Nigel Farage is also under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards watchdog for failure to declare an ‘unconditional gift’ of £5 million, although that’s temporarily paused, while he competes in a by-election against a Bin.
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And if that were not enough, the police are investigating donations made to the party by George “Posh boy” Cottrell, and his mother (who allegedly made her donations on behalf of Posh George).
Posh George – who is known to call Farage ‘Daddy’ – is a convicted fraudster who literally wrote a book titled ‘How to Launder Money’. It’s available from a wide range of bookstores.
Undocumented workers and money laundering do exist within Turkish and Turkish Cypriot business – just as they occur in every other ethnic community. There is no evidence to show it is more prevalent among British Turks. In simple terms, it exists in business. And in politics too.
But as interesting – and hypocritical - as all the above may be, there is a far more serious threat from Reform for British Turks.
Embargoed! – a leading Turkish Cypriot human rights group that I chair which campaigns for the end of the international isolation of Turkish Cypriots and their North Cyprus homeland – has long argued that language matters. The words we use shape perceptions and our behaviour towards others.
Embargoed! was the first group in the British Turkish community to run an anti-racism seminar to help our community and others to understand the harm racism and bigotry does to society.
When a community or nation is grouped together, as we see here, and when they are then belittled and smeared without any foundation for such accusations, it prepares the ground to treat them differently.
In the case of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriots, it allows people to watch, unmoved, as their rights as co-founders of the Republic of Cyprus are forcibly taken from them, and it provides justification for leaving them isolated and embargoed without anyone standing up for them or questioning their suffering. And when they call out for help, it allows you to look the other way.
Since Reform’s campaign to frame Turkish barbershops as “dodgy”, there’s been a host of attacks on them in Britain, including two shops seriously vandalised during the June 2026 riots in Northern Ireland. Under a Channel 5 news reel on Facebook about these attacks, the top comment, which received over 1,300 likes, stated: “Was it a barbers [sic] shop or a money laundering shop”. Many other posts underneath the clip were of a similar fashion.
There have been other attacks on Turkish-owned businesses, and lots of racist abuse levelled at members of the community online and in person. Unfortunately, British Turks do not have a strong community body to demand a stop to these politically motivated racial smears, so these incidents go largely unnoticed. This, in turn, must surely encourage Reform to continue to unfairly target our community because they get away with it again and again and again.
That is why we must raise our collective voice and not allow such racism to go unchallenged.
Taskin Ismet is the chair of Turkish Cypriot human rights group Embargoed!, which campaigns for the immediate and unconditional ending of the international isolation of Turkish Cypriots and their North Cyprus homeland.
Main photos, top, of (L-R)
Robert Jenrick, photo © House of Commons/Roger Harris
Nigel Farage, photo © House of Commons/Laurie Noble
Richard Tice, photo © House of Commons/Laurie Noble
