Türkiye’s coast guard on Sunday said it saved 71 asylum-seekers after they were pushed back into Turkish territorial waters by Greek naval forces.
The Coast Guard Command said in a statement it dispatched teams to the area after receiving information about a group of irregular migrants in dinghies in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Türkiye’s Muğla province.
The teams rescued the irregular migrants, including 11 children, from five dinghies.
The migrants were brought to Datça Pier and handed over to the Provincial Directorate of Immigration after processing.
Türkiye has been a key transit point for irregular migrants who want to cross into Europe to start new lives, especially since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. Every year, hundreds of thousands of migrants flee civil conflict or economic hardship in their home countries with the hope of reaching Europe.
Some migrants make the dangerous journey over land or sea with the assistance of smugglers, who often abandon them, especially during sea journeys, after receiving thousands of dollars from each migrant. Others are stopped by Turkish security forces before crossing the border into Europe.
In some cases, neighboring Greece is accused of pushing back migrants in a controversial practice. In the Aegean Sea, Greek coast guard boats often drive out approaching migrant boats to the Greek islands.
The latest statistics, between 2010 and 2023, show Türkiye rescued 184,175 irregular migrants from its seas after they put their lives in danger with the hope of reaching Europe. Some 923 migrants, on the other hand, ended up dead on perilous journeys in the same period, while 503 people remain unaccounted for after their boats sank.
Last week, Turkish authorities recovered the bodies of seven irregular migrants and rescued 18 others in the Aegean off the coast of an islet after their boat was pushed back by Greek security forces and hit the rocks, sinking with 27 on board.
Greece is a major gateway for migrants from the Middle East, Africa and Asia seeking a better life in the affluent European Union. Thousands slip into the country every year, mostly in small boats from Türkiye.
Relations with Türkiye are often tense, and the Turkish coast guard has repeatedly accused the Greek side of mistreating migrants.
Migrant charities and human rights groups have also accused Greece’s coast guard and police of illegally preventing arriving migrants from seeking asylum via Turkish waters.
Greece has angrily denied the accusations, arguing its border forces have saved hundreds of thousands of migrants from sinking boats.
The country’s reputation took a further knock in June 2023, when a battered fishing vessel with an estimated 750 people on board sank.
Only 104 people survived, despite the Greek coast guard having shadowed the vessel for hours, and the trawler sank after a botched attempt by the coast guard to tow it. Greek authorities again denied these allegations.
A June 17 BBC report, citing interviews with eyewitnesses following reports from media, charities and the Turkish Coast Guard Command, alleged that the deaths of 43 migrants in 15 incidents between May 2020 and May 2023 were the direct result of the actions of the Greek coast guard in the Aegean Sea.
The BBC report included a claim by a Cameroonian man that he and two other migrants were picked up by masked men, including police, just after landing on the island of Samos.
The man claimed all three were put in a coast guard boat and thrown into the sea, and that the other two men drowned as a result.
The report also quoted a Syrian man who said he was part of a group picked up at sea by the Greek coast guard off Rhodes. He said the survivors were put in life rafts and left adrift in Turkish waters, where several died after one life raft sank before the Turkish Coast Guard Command came to pick them up.
The EU’s border protection agency Frontex too is accused of turning a blind eye while Greek officials were blocking, damaging and even sinking migrant boats trying to cross from Türkiye to Greece in 2020.
While the EU probes concluded that Frontex and its executives didn’t prevent basic rights violations, allegations continued, backed by eyewitnesses, video records and satellite footage. Frontex is said to have records in its database of hundreds of migrants being pushed back in the Aegean Sea.
Following the scathing BBC report, 33 European Parliament lawmakers have called for an independent investigation into the accusations, saying, “This growing evidence of systematic violations, linking the actions of the Greek coast guard directly to the deaths of migrants as a coordinated and deliberate policy of deterrence of arrivals, should be highly alarming to both the EU Commission and Frontex.”
