Category Archives: Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal

In the following months, we will extend our focus further to Europe by reporting on the EU-Turkey Deal and its consequences for migrants in Greece. A cooperation with activists on Lesvos allows HarekAct to expand its monitoring to the Aegean islands, focusing in particular the situation refugees and migrants stranded there are facing due to the EU-Turkey Statement, deportations back to Turkey and legal aspects. 

Articles under this section will be tagged with #MonitoringEUTurkey

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal, News Digest

Pushback, Violence and Separation of Families in Greek Waters!

Via Refugee Rescue – This morning (10th November) at 3.47am, Refugee Rescue boat ‘Mo Chara’ received a request by the Hellenic coastguard to assist in transitioning 17 very distressed and hypothermic people to port.

Stock photo of Turkish Coastguard with refugees

Several arrivals reported that their dinghy – originally carrying 37 people – was intercepted by the Turkish coast guard in Greek waters. It is alleged that a Turkish official fired multiple gun shots into the air before retreating, and then returned to fire shots into the water close to the dinghy, while ramming the boat with their vessel on a number of occasions.  Continue reading Pushback, Violence and Separation of Families in Greek Waters! →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal, News Digest

Fragile Nature of EU-Turkey Relations: Interview with Laura Batalla

Via Bosphorus Migration Studies – Laura Batalla is the Secretary-General of the European Parliament Turkey Forum which is a group comprised of members of the European Parliament who have a keen interest in EU-Turkey relations. Mehmet Enes Beşer made an interview with Mrs. Batalla on the fragile EU-Turkey relations and the future prospects:

“I wouldn’t call it a dispute. However, it is true that we may have hit our lowest point in EU-Turkey relations since accession negotiations started in 2005.” Continue reading Fragile Nature of EU-Turkey Relations: Interview with Laura Batalla →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal, News Digest

EU Parliamentarians Warn Refugees May Die on Greek Islands

Via Greek Reporter – Council and the European Commission must work urgently with Greece to prevent a humanitarian crisis this winter, according to the he Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) Group in the European Parliament.

The group called for a debate in the parliament’s plenary session next week in Strasbourg. “Thousands of people seeking asylum on the Greek islands still do not have adequate protection for the coming cold months,” said S&D Group President Gianni Pittella. Continue reading EU Parliamentarians Warn Refugees May Die on Greek Islands →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal, News Digest

Anger rises in Lesbos over crowded refugee camps

Via The Guardian – A surge in refugee arrivals has led to soaring tensions on Greece’s outlying Aegean islands, with Lesbos’s mayor accusing the government in Athens of allowing it to become a giant prison camp.

Boycotting celebrations on Wednesday marking the 105th anniversary of Lesbos’s liberation from Ottoman Turkish rule, local officials gave the leftist-led coalition in Athens an ultimatum: either it took immediate action to decongest the island or risked mass protests from an increasingly unruly population. Continue reading Anger rises in Lesbos over crowded refugee camps →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal, News Digest

Mind The Gap! A Closer Look at the Inconsistencies in the EU-Turkey Statement Progress Reports

Via University of Oxford / Faculty of Law – Today, Turkey is host to approximately 3.4 million refugees and asylum seekers, including more than 3.2 million Syrians. Due to its strategic location, Turkey has been a transit country for migrants and refugees, a necessary stop on their way to Europe. In 2015, nearly one million people arrived irregularly in Europe by sea, with more than 856,723 refugees and migrants traveling to Greece by sea from Turkey. This explains why cooperation with the Turkish government has become an essential part of the European policy to manage migration.

PHOTO: ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Continue reading Mind The Gap! A Closer Look at the Inconsistencies in the EU-Turkey Statement Progress Reports →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal

‘Racist and illegal’ fast-track deportations target North African and Asian refugees in Greece

The Greek authorities are deporting migrants on the Greek islands to Turkey in an expedited process – raising concerns over potentially illegal and prejudiced practices, reports Matt Broomfield.

Via The New Arab – Refugees from so-called “undesirable” countries are being jailed upon arrival to the Greek islands, before being put through a summary fast-track asylum procedure and returned to detention in Turkey within a matter of weeks, it has emerged.

Individuals from North Africa and South Asia are being singled out upon arrival, due to a policy that has been described as racist and illegal.

Continue reading ‘Racist and illegal’ fast-track deportations target North African and Asian refugees in Greece →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal

Refugees in Chios: This is the shame of the VIAL hotspot «expansion»

Tents without electricity, huts, overcrowding, sick and abandoned people: Chios Solidarity publicizes audiovisual material describing the inhumane living conditions in the outdoor campsite-store of people outside the hotspot of the saturated VIAL and calls for immediate action.

Via Chios Solidarity

vial-tentes-nolampa

Continue reading Refugees in Chios: This is the shame of the VIAL hotspot «expansion» →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal

28 “reasons” for arbitrary detention

Since the EU-Turkey deal was implemented, arbitrary detention of asylum seekers on the Greek Hotspot Islands has been on the rise. On Lesvos Island the police detains – among others – people who they consider as “trouble makers” and asylum seekers who gave up their right to apply for a protection status and agreed to so-called “voluntary return” after months of forcibly staying in terrible living conditions behind barbed wire. Until recently, members of six nationalities were furthermore simply detained on basis of their national belonging. In September, this illegal detention practice has been expanded to 28 nationalities. Affected are nationalities with less than 25% acceptance rate who are sweepingly considered as “economic migrants”. Asylum seekers with the respective national belongings are detained in a pre-removal centre within Moria camp without adequate access to basic goods such as clothes or medical and legal support.  Continue reading 28 “reasons” for arbitrary detention →

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal, News Digest

September Report on Rights Violations and Resistance in Lesvos

Via Legal Centre Lesbos – In September, Mr. Maarten Verwey, EU coordinator for implementation of the EU-Turkey Statement, travelled to Lesvos and met with authorities in the camps, and the Mytilene mayor’s office. He did not, however, meet with any of the individuals best placed to brief him on the impact of the EU-Turkey Statement: the refugees and asylum seekers who know all too well how refugees are treated in Turkey, and as a consequence of the ‘deal’, have been trapped on Lesvos for months and years living in inhumane and degrading conditions in perpetual fear of deportation.

Their situation is constantly deteriorating: The European Commission increases pressure to return even asylum seekers who are classified as vulnerable and individuals applying for family reunification to Turkey. Furthermore, the Greek Council of State Plenary – Greece’s highest administrative court – ruled that Turkey is a safe country, setting dangerous precedent for forcible returns to Turkey under EU-Turkey deal, trampling roughshod over overwhelming evidence that basic human rights of returnees are systematically violated by Erdogan’s repressive authoritarian regime.

However, refugees and supporters on Lesvos keep up resistance. They go on protests marches, occupied the main Square in the town of Mytilene and demand freedom of movement.

Monitoring the EU-Turkey Deal

Returned and Lost: What Happens After Readmission to Turkey?

Via University of Oxford – Turkey was regarded as a safe third country for the purposes of the EU-Turkey Statement and on September 22, 2017, the Greek Council of State approved decisions of earlier Appeals Committees, which declared Turkey a safe third country; thus paving the way for more returns. However, little is known about the reception conditions of the migrants and asylum seekers who have been readmitted to Turkey. To fill this knowledge gap and to achieve a better understanding of the impacts of the Statement, the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Migration Law Section conducted research that was funded by the Dutch Council for Refugees.

The following article is a summary of a report by Orcun Ulusoy for Free University Berlin, which you can find here.

Continue reading Returned and Lost: What Happens After Readmission to Turkey? →