A total of 261 irregular migrants were detained across Türkiye’s western shores in the past week, security sources announced Monday.
Turkish security forces detained 20 irregular Palestinian migrants in the Bodrum district of Muğla province and arrested 77 migrants from Palestine and Afghanistan found in a rubber boat off the coast of Ayvacık district in the northwestern province of Çanakkale.
Meanwhile, 113 irregular migrants pushed back into Turkish waters by the Greek coast guard were rescued off the Çesme district in the western city of Izmir. According to a statement from the Coast Guard Command, some 26 others were held by security forces in the same district.
The agency also informed that 25 other asylum-seekers pushed back into Türkiye by Greece were rescued off Kuşadası district in the western Aydin province.
All of the migrants were taken to provincial migration offices.
Greece has long been under fire for its illegal, often inhumane, and sometimes deadly practice of pushbacks – summary deportations of migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum.
The Greek government denies all allegations, despite claims to the contrary from alleged victims, rights groups, Turkish drones and even the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.
“In Greece, pushbacks at land and sea borders have become the de facto general policy,” the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe Gonzalez Morales, said last year.
Similarly, many in the international community, including Türkiye, which attracts illegal migrants worldwide for being a key gateway to Europe, have frequently condemned the practice as a violation of humanitarian values and international law for endangering the lives of vulnerable migrants.
While the Turkish coast guard has rescued thousands sent back by Greek authorities, countless others died at sea as boats full of refugees sank or capsized, especially in the Aegean Sea.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded nearly 2,000 migrants dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea last year. A report by Türkiye’s Ombudsman Institution said in July 2022 that Greece had pushed back about 42,000 migrants since 2020. Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 16, 2022, the Turkish Coast Guard Command’s Aegean Command Station saved 47,498 irregular migrants in 1,550 separate cases across its areas of jurisdiction, over 18,000 of whom were victims of Greece’s pushback policy.
In early 2023 alone, Greek coast guards pushed back hundreds of migrants trying to cross the Aegean, causing at least nine deaths in two shipwrecks near Türkiye’s western shores last month.
Athens consistently rejects the accusations despite abundant migrant testimonies, media evidence and international scrutiny. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ government, since coming into office in 2019, has vowed to make his country “less attractive” to asylum-seekers.
