Zeit Online (link in German) – Turkey is partly putting the refugee agreement with the EU on hold. On Wednesday, Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said towards the TV-channel 24TV that no refugees are being admitted back from the Greek islands at the moment. At the same time, he threatened with a complete revocation of the deal.
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Are you Syrious – Turkey has partially suspended the refugee agreement with the EU. At present, no refugees are withdrawn from the Greek islands, said the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Cavusoglu today. The main reason for this, according to him, is the lack of visa-free travel for the Turks in the EU, interpreting that as the Union’s not respecting of their side of the deal. There are a lot of doubts about these potential “threats” from the Turkish side.
According to the latest official statistics, 110 people have been returned to Turkey from the Aegean islands in 2017. In spite of the decision for Turkey to “ re-evaluate” the land-passage aspects of the EU- Turkey deal, he also said that Turkey would not reopen its Aegean border.
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Médecins Sans Frontières – One year after the EU-Turkey Deal, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) released a report to expose the human costs of European policy failures in Greece and the Balkans. MSF calls on the EU and member state leaders to radically change their approach to migration and ensure a swift end to the unnecessary suffering of the thousands caught in the consequences of the EU-Turkey deal.
Continue reading One year after the EU-Turkey deal: New MSF report
The New York Times on Turkey’s threats to review the EU-Turkey Deal again.
“We will review the migrant deal if necessary,” Numan Kurtulmus, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, warned on Monday night. In Europe, the announcement prompted fears of a repeat of the 2015 migration surges that saw 850,000 people leave Turkey for Greece in a single year. “I expect waves of people,” he said in a video call on Tuesday night. “The business will come back to the way it was, and maybe better.”
Göçmen Dayanışma Ağı – Recently, we hear often that as a result of police operations in certain district, people of “foreign origin” are “caught”, detained, and sent to camps or detention center. We only get the news that they will be deported, but there is no information on what were they accused of actually. In Istanbul, sometimes police and municipal police teams pick up migrants (mostly children) accused of getting involved in begging, and send them to Pendik Kızılay Dr. Kemal Demir Refugee Camp. At the target of all these operations, there are undocumented migrants, people of certain nationalities, or those who are accused of a suspicion of “terror” or other crimes. No information is made public other than the number (and sometimes nationalities) of people arrested. For instance, according to some news published on 1st of February it was declared that “203 people of foreign origin were detained”, and that they will be sent to General Directorate of Migration Management and deported. However, there was nothing else made public, but that people who were detained were processed according to “violation of document” and that such inspections will further continue in the following days. Continue reading Bilmek İstiyoruz! // We Want to Know!
via Handelsblatt (Link in German) – 84 people were rescued on Thursday night by the Greek coastguard and a cargo vessel off the Peloponnese peninsula. They were in distress at sea, so they had to call the Greek Coast Guards.
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europe online magazine – The General Court of the European Union said on Tuesday it does not have the jurisdiction to pass judgement on a case brought about by three asylum seekers against a migration deal struck between EU member states and Turkey.
The complainants, two Pakistanis and one Afghan national, had challenged an agreement between Ankara and the bloc to send back migrants arriving in Europe from Turkey.
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Star (link in Turkish) – The Public Administration of Social Housing (TOKİ), which is attached to the prime minister office, declared that 50 % of the wall that is being constructed along the Turkish-Syrian border is completed.
In total the wall will be 511 km long: Of these, 97 km in the province of Hatay; 67 km in Kilis; 38,10 km in Gaziantep; 194 km in Şanlıurfa; 66 km in Mardin and 47 km in Şırnak.
Read the original article here.
In September 2015, thousands of refugees gathered in a number of cities in Turkey, such as Istanbul, Edirne. Their goal was to cross over the Turkish borders all together and reach Europe. The scale of the march in Turkey was absolutely unprecedented. People carried banners and signs addressing the European Union, and some signs even referred personally to Germany’s chancelor Angela Merkel.
In a press release, the demonstrators referred to themselves as migrants who were fighting for their rights. Many of them marched together with their whole families but carried only some bags or just a backpack. Although the majority were from Syria, other nationalities were present too. Some had lived in Turkey for years, while others had e.g. just come from Lebanon or Jordan. The people who camped in parks or at the highway waited for Europe to open its borders. This never happened. The Turkish police pushed migrants to go to Ankara, Istanbul or Izmir and arrested hundreds of them.