Via The Guardian – Twelve migrants, apparently from North Africa, have been sailing to and fro between Istanbul and Odessa on a Danish passenger ferry for the last seven weeks, locked in four cabins with no country willing to take them.
According to the operator, DFDS, Turkey and Ukraine both refuse to accept the men. Continue reading Migrants stuck on endless ferry journey as countries refuse entry
Via The Sofia Globe – Boats carrying more than 200 refugees were stopped by the Romanian Coastguard on Saturday, according to reports in Austrian and Romanian publications. They had started in Turkey. The article can be read here.
Via Independent – After activists intervened at Heathrow Airport, the pilot of a Turkish Airlines flight refused to fly to Istanbul with a young Afghan man aboard, whom British authorities wanted to deport to Afghanistan. The article can be read here.
Via Daily Sabah Turkey – Security forces intercepted 150 Syrian refugees who boarded a fishing boat to Romania from the Black Sea city of Kastamonu on a route probably used for the first time by migrants trying to reach Europe.
Continue reading Syrian refugees stopped at unlikely route to Romania
Via The News York Times – The mayor of Lesbos has accused Turkey of failing to honour its end of the €3 billion EU deal to stem the flow of migrants into Europe.
Spyros Galinos says that an increase in arrivals on the Greek island after a 16-month lull that followed the signing of the deal, shows that Turkey is reneging on its obligations to police the people-smuggling industry. More than a million people travelled from its shores to Greece in 2015 and last year. Continue reading Turkey accused of breaking EU migration deal
Via NTV – Already 30.000 Syrians who want to spend Eid al-Adha (Sacrifice Feast) in their homecountry already crossed into Syria from Turkey’s border gate in Kilis.
Asylum seekers who want to go back to Syria for a short period of time and then turn back, need the permission of the governor. A total of 47.322 Syrians applied to leave the country for the Sacrifice Feast, already 30.000 left. Long queues are already forming at the 7 control points at the Syrian-Turkish border.
This is a short summary of the Turkish original. Follow here to read the whole article in Turkish.
Via Keep Talking Greece – Does President Recep Tayyip Erdogan let the EU-Turkey deal on migration go burst? A significant increase in the number of refugees and migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey has been recorded in the last six days. A total of 1,196 people arrived in the Greek islands of northern and eastern Aegean Sea in the time Friday, August 18th – Wednesday, August 23rd 2017.
Continue reading 1,190 new refugees arrive in 5 days. Does Erdogan let EU-Turkey deal go burst?
Via Middle East Eye – Romanian authorities said on Monday that they caught a fishing boat carrying 68 asylum seekers, including 23 children, off Romania’s coast, raising fears that a new migrating route to Europe has opened up.
Government officials reported intercepting the boat, carrying Iraqis and Syrians, late on Sunday evening in the Black Sea in Romania’s southeastern Constanta region, in the second such incident in the last week.
“They were accompanied by two Turkish traffickers,” Ionela Pasat, a spokeswoman for the Constanta coastguard, told AFP.
The group was brought to the port of Mangalia for medical examinations on Monday before being handed over to the immigration authorities, she said.
Coastguards reported a boat with 69 Iraqi asylum seekers in Romanian waters on 13 August. One Bulgarian and one Cypriot were taken into custody on suspicion of human trafficking.
Despite pleging to take in 1,942 refugees on Friday, EU member Romania has avoided the largest migration crisis since the Second World War, due to being outside of the European Union’s passport-free Schengen zone.
The route from Turkey to Greece by sea has been curtailed since the EU signed a deal with Ankara last year to halt the flow of migrants in exchange for $3.5bn aid to assist Turkey’s hosting of refugees.
Turkey’s neighbour Greece also agreed under the deal to detain all refugees arriving on its Aegean islands in the hope of deterring others.
Yet concerns have been raised in Bucharast that the Black Sea route could emerge as an alternative passage for migrants, as opposed to the traditional but treacherous Mediterranean route.
Romanian police have already reported a five-fold increase in migrants attempting to cross the border illegally since 2016.
Over 111,000 migrants have reached Europe by sea so far this year, mostly crossing from Libya to Italy, according to recent statistics. Proving a risky route, over 2,300 have died attemping to sail across.
NGO rescue ships were banned from patrolling Libyan waters where hundreds of thousands of people have been rescued in recent years and taken to Italy.
The article was originally published by Middle East Eye. To read the article there, click here.
Via Hürriyet – In a rural district of Konya -Karapınar – one Syrian died and one was severely injured in an armed fight between Syrians and locals. Around 00:30 at night, three Turkish nationals, attacked two Syrian men sitting on the street, who according to the attackers had previously harrassed the sister of one of them. One of the attackers went home, took his hunting rifle and opened the fire on the two Syrians. With injuries in various parts of their bodies, they were taking to a hospital but for one of them all help came to late. He passed away.
Continue reading One Syrian died, one injured in fight around Konya
Sea Watch and the Hope Project Lesvos document another violent pushback case in the Aegean. This time carried out by the Turkish Coast Guards:
https://www.facebook.com/seawatchprojekt/videos/1913840762167329/
Continue reading Turkish Coast Guard attacked refugee boat in Aegean