At least 33 refugees drowned off Turkey’s Aegean coast as they tried to reach a Greek island, and a search and rescue operation was under way for the remaining passengers.
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Members of Turkish forces look at the bodies of some of the migrants that were drowned as they were trying to reach Greece, at a port in the coastal town of Dikili, near Izmir, Turkey, Monday, Feb. 8, 2016.
Both the Anadolu and Dogan agencies reported that 22 people died close to the Greek island of Lesbos.
The sea route from Turkey to Greece was the most popular way for migrants trying to enter Europe in 2015.
The IOM says more than 68,000 migrants arrived on Greek first five weeks of 2016, despite coasts in the frequently stormy states.
The Turkish deputy premier said Ankara had reached the end of its “capacity to absorb” refugees.
Turkey, however, has yet to open the border to the refugees who are camping out nearby. Last year, Dutch border police arrested 330 people on suspicion of people smuggling, 200 of them during mobile border checks.
Davutoglu also said that Turkey would inform Brussels next week on the initial projects it plans after receiving 3 billion euros in funds from the European Union aimed at curbing record flows of migrants to Europe via Turkey, where 2.2 million Syrians are already sheltering.
Around half of those migrants and refugees have been coming from Syria; an additional 44 percent have come from Afghanistan and Iraq (combined), according to the IOM’s Missing Migrants project, which tracks the ongoing humanitarian crisis.
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Turkey has since started to require Syrians arriving from third countries to apply for visas, in a bid to exclude those who aim to continue on to Greece. Thousands of Syrians from Aleppo, one of the country’s largest cities, have been forced to flee north toward the Turkish border after pro-government forces have stormed Aleppo with the help of Russian bombs.
