Earlier this month images of a dead toddler washed up on a Turkish beach shocked the world, and prompted fierce debate about how best to manage the growing numbers of people trying to reach Europe.
Advertisement
The mainly Syrian migrants were avoiding the perilous sea crossing from Turkey to nearby Greek islands such as Kos and Lesbos via small boats, attempted by tens of thousands this summer. “So we all need to leave I think”, said Hamid, a 25-year-old Syrian political science graduate, who wants to continue his studies at Britain’s Oxford University.
Then the smuggler who has been piloting the boat assigns one of the migrants to take the wheel, and dives off. His job is done and he and his colleagues can count their cash. “We have our own duties; this has been a great burden on us”, he said.
More than 500,000 migrants were detected at external borders of the European Union in the first eight months of this year, according to EU border-management agency Frontex.
Few, but deadly. On Tuesday, 22 refugees, including four children, died when the wooden boat they were crammed onto sank off the Turkish coast on its way to Kos.
He says they appear to have been brought to the bridges in groups of 20 to 40 by traffickers seeking to avoid arrest.
Fears of shipwreck propelled hundreds to go for the land border with Greece by bus this week, or once they couldn’t discover tickets, by foot from Istanbul.
Turkish gendarmerie briefly set up barricades near Edirne, a city close to the Greek and Bulgarian borders, to stop hundreds of people from reaching either country.
“They can not stay here”.
President Klaus Iohannis told lawmakers Wednesday in parliament that “we are not talking about places to stay, but people and their integration into society”. She said the EU should help guard the 16,000-kilometer European border coastline, but German Chancellor Angla Merkel asserted, “Greece needs to assume its responsibility”.
Migrants began arriving at the station in Istanbul’s Esenler district on September 15 and have been waiting there since even though bus companies departing for Thrace refuse to transport them. “The 15km zone before the border is a zone from which refugees are banned”.
Advertisement
But they don’t want to risk their lives crossing to Europe on a flimsy raft.
