"We saw refugees expelled by the Greek coast guard, including children and elderly people, shivering from cold and fear in rickety boats, which they stayed in for hours before the Turkish coast guard reached them."

This was mentioned by the American "New York Times" correspondent in Istanbul, Carlotta Gal,

in a report in the

newspaper, in which she said that Turkish officials - after continuing for more than a year to pick up people who say Greece expelled them illegally - invited journalists to watch Direct rescue operations.

They confiscated everything they had

And Gal mentioned in her report that these refugees were just hours before resting in a forest on the Greek island of Lesbos when Greek police officers arrested them, confiscated their documents, money and mobile phones and took them to sea.

"They kicked all of us with their feet, even children, women, men and everyone. They didn't say anything, they just left us. They weren't human at all," the reporter quoted Ashraf Saleh, 21, as saying.

Turkish Coast Guard officials described this as a clear case rarely seen by journalists of illegal expulsions that have now become - as the reporter conveys - a regular feature of the "dangerous cat-and-mouse game between the two countries" on the thousands of migrants who ride the sea to cross from Turkey to the Greek islands on their way to the Greek islands. Europe.


She noted that since the collapse of a mutual agreement last year (2020);

Turkey and Greece have been at loggerheads over how to deal with the steady flow of migrants along one of the most used routes since the refugee movement surged in 2015.

forced expulsion

For more than a year, she said, Turkey turned a blind eye to the migrants, allowing them to cross the sea to Greece, which resorted to forcibly expelling them, disabling their boats, and returning them to Turkey when trapped at sea.

Refugee organizations and European officials have denounced the so-called backlash tactic as a violation of international law and basic European values.

The Greek government denies that it has sent any migrants back, while insisting on its right to protect its borders.

"Many cases have been investigated, including by the European Union, and the reports have not found any evidence of any breach of 'fundamental rights'," Greece's Minister of Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarashi, said last week.

without result

The head of the United Nations refugee agency in Turkey, Philippe Leclerc, said his office had submitted evidence - including accounts of violence and family separation - to the Greek ombudsman, requesting an investigation into the cases, without result.

Leclerc explained that the two countries are in an impasse, with Turkey demanding Greece to end repatriations first, and Greece demanding Turkey first to return 1,400 migrants whose asylum applications were rejected.


Turkish officials - who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media - said that the aim of allowing journalists to find out about the situation of these refugees is to draw the world's attention to the burden that Turkey bears in hosting about 4 million asylum seekers from the wars of other countries, Among them are more than 3.6 million Syrians, along with another 400,000 people from Afghanistan, Asia and the Middle East, adding that Turkey is "the largest refugee community in the world, and has controlled the entire suburbs of Istanbul and the capital, Ankara."

fatal dangers مخاطر

First Lieutenant Saadun Ozdemir, commander of the Northern Aegean group in the Turkish Coast Guard - after his crew rescued 20 Afghan refugees - said that merchant ships as well as Navy and Coast Guard vessels pass through the northern Aegean and can easily collide with small boats and boats without lights or Navigation.

Tommy Olsen, who runs the Aegean Boat Report, a Norwegian non-profit that tracks migrants' arrivals to the Greek islands through photos and electronic data, confirmed that the group of refugees seen by journalists was on Lesbos that day.

Interviews with migrants, who were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard in several incidents over the course of four nights, revealed the scale of Greek abuses and the refugees' growing desperation.