By Giorgi Lomsadze  Eurasianet

In recent years the Caucasus country has become a magnet for Iranian students, business owners, and dissidents. But now many report they’re not being allowed to enter.

Names and other identifying elements in this story have been changed at the request of the interviewees and for their safety

When Abbas approached the Turkish Airlines counter at the Istanbul Airport, he did not expect any trouble.

An Iranian digital nomad in his mid-20s, Abbas was coming back to Georgia, a place he has called home for almost a decade and where his family lives. The airline representative checked his papers and, after a brief conversation that Abbas took to be with the Georgian border police, said that Abbas would not be allowed on the flight.

“They did not give me any response. They did not tell me why,” Abbas told Eurasianet. “I contacted [Georgian] border police and even the people on the border police hotline were surprised. They said maybe there was a mistake.”

Shortly before this, at the same airport, Farah and a group of her fellow Iranian students were already seated in a Tbilisi-bound plane when a flight attendant approached and asked them to disembark. “We were pushed out like some kind of terrorists. Everybody was looking at us,” said Farah, who has already completed one year in a Georgian university and had paid upfront for the upcoming fall semester.

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