In another instance of Greek brutality toward irregular migrants, the Turkish Coast Guard Sunday rescued 14 people in the North Aegean Sea who were illegally pushed back into Turkish territorial waters by Greek authorities.
Coast Guard Northern Aegean Group Command teams determined that there were irregular migrants on a life raft off Ayvacık, Çanakkale. The coast guard also reported that the migrants were from Yemen, Sudan, and Eritrea. After necessary procedures, the migrants, who were brought ashore, were transferred to the Ayvacık Immigration Office.
In a separate incident, 41 irregular migrants were caught in the cargo box of a pickup truck in Muğla in western Türkiye. Authorities have detained and arrested two individuals suspected of engaging in migrant smuggling.
Türkiye and global rights groups have repeatedly condemned Greece’s illegal practice of pushing back irregular migrants, saying it violates humanitarian values and international law by endangering the lives of vulnerable migrants, including women and children. Hundreds of migrants are feared dead when a migrant boat sank off southwestern Greece last week.
Some accounts suggest the accident might have happened when a Greek vessel tried to tow the overcrowded migrant boat into Italian waters. Türkiye has been a key transit point for irregular migrants wanting to cross into Europe to start new lives, especially those fleeing war and persecution.
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. Greece has also been accused of deliberately and systematically cooperating with the EU's border agency Frontex for the pushbacks, according to a 2022 investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).
While the Turkish coast guard has come to the rescue of thousands sent back by Greek authorities, countless others died at sea as boats full of refugees sank or capsized, especially in the Aegean Sea where both countries share a border. 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 in March. Athens consistently denies the accusations despite abundant migrant testimonies, media evidence and international scrutiny. Mitsotakis, since coming into office in 2019, has vowed to make his country "less attractive" to asylum-seekers.
The migrant crisis in the Aegean and the broader Mediterranean remains unsolved as on the other side of the issue is the persistence of migrant smugglers. Greek authorities too have been tightening their crackdown on suspects, including police officers, linked with human smuggling networks that bring migrants mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.