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Turkey Refuses Refugees’ Land Bridge to Europe

Tensions are escalating as “death boats” remain the sole option

[EDIRNE, TURKEY] – Thousands of mostly Syrian refugees who came to Edirne, a Turkish town near the borders with Greece and Bulgaria, have abandoned their effort to take a safe land route to Europe.

“Our campaign is failed,” says Ahmad Al Sallakh, a 21-year-old former university student from Damascus. He left Edirne with many others after giving up hope of crossing the border into Greece and seeking the land route into Europe.

The migrants, fleeing the war in Syria and seeking an alternative to being smuggled in overloaded boats across the perilous Aegean Sea, had formed a makeshift camp in a stadium in Edirne.

“We don’t want to drown in the sea,” said Murhaf Taha, a 21-year-old former university student from Aleppo. “Many kids drown.”

A widely-viewed photo of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s (initially misreported as Aylan) body on a beach in the Turkish resort town of Bodrum brought the plight of drowning refugees, exploited by expensive people smugglers, to the world’s attention.

The Aegean Sea gets rougher in the fall. Recently, 56 refugees, including 20 children, drowned in two separate incidents when their overloaded boats sank. More recently, 13 more died — including six children — off the Turkish coast near Lesbos when a boat carrying refugees sank after hitting a cargo ship.

Almost 3,000 of the nearly half a million refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe this year have drowned, according to the International Migration Organization.

The asylum seekers complain about hard lives in Turkey, which hosts about two million Syrians. Taha has lived in Istanbul for two years, working over 14 hours a day washing dishes in a kitchen. “You give your whole salary for renting a room and for electricity and water,” he told The Media Line.

“It’s such a difficult life in Istanbul,” said another 21-year-old former student from Damascus who didn’t want his name used. “If I stay here, in my opinion I have no future.”

Photo: Nick Ashdown/The Media Line [1]

Photo: Nick Ashdown/The Media Line

“I want to complete my college, I want to do something in my life. I don’t want to die like all [the others],” Al Sallakh said, explaining that he had no hope for a future in Turkey and wished to make it to the Netherlands or Switzerland.

The Turkish government is often praised for accepting two million refugees and building some of the best camps in the world for them, but the vast majority don’t live on the camps and the government refuses to give them official asylum seeker status. They are ‘guests,’ not refugees, which means they have fewer rights.

Though many Syrians in Turkey work, they don’t have permits to do so legitimately and exploitation is common. It’s also very difficult for them to obtain residence permits and most of their children don’t have access to any kind of education.

Emel Kurma, coordinator of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly in Istanbul, is critical of Turkey’s policies towards its refugee population. She said the government severely restricts international humanitarian organizations’ activities in the country, and isn’t transparent, accountable, or communicative about its policies. Kurma also claims the government isn’t doing much to stop frictions between refugees and locals.

“The tensions in between [the host communities and refugees] are escalating and resulting in human rights violations and sheer violence,” she said.

Hundreds of the refugees in Edirne traversed the 155 miles from Istanbul on foot.

“They will certainly not stay here,” the local governor Ali Şahin told the Turkish press, saying that about 8,000 refugees had recently arrived, but most have been kicked out.

Turkish authorities have set up a nine-mile zone adjacent to its borders with Greece and Bulgaria that refugees are forbidden to enter. Most of the asylum seekers don’t have passports, so they wouldn’t be able to legally enter Greece or Bulgaria, both of which have doubled down on border controls.

Europe’s much-criticized response to its worst migration crisis since the Second World War has been lukewarm and divided, though public opinion seems to be changing in favor of more refugee-friendly policies.

The student from Damascus who declined to be named and many of his compatriots are hopeful that the European Union would let them enter. “I just hope they accept us,” he told The Media Line. “We are brothers. We are not from another planet. We are the same. We are human.”

Many European politicians have expressed apprehensions about letting in potential jihadists, but none of the refugees The Media Line interviewed showed any propensity for violence. They were students, teachers and parents.

“Most of these people are families. What they’re asking for is peace,” Murat Shawkat, an English teacher from Kobani, said. “My wife is pregnant. I need my future child to live in a good way.”

Abdulrahman Ahmi, an Arabic language teacher from Aleppo, said he’s eager to start a new life in a European country.

“We want to go to Europe to live our lives there,” he told The Media Line. “Not for one year or two. I want to go to Europe to live all my life there. I want to be one of them. We know [European people] and we love them.”

Refugee children look through a bus window as they leave for Istanbul while waiting to cross to Europe near Turkey’s western border with Greece and Bulgaria, in Edirne, on September, 23, 2015. Hundreds of migrants have made the trek to Edirne in the hope of being allowed to cross into neighboring Greece or Bulgaria and avoid the often-risky journey across the Aegean Sea. Many arrived last week but have been blocked from approaching the border by law enforcement. (Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images) [3]

Refugee children look through a bus window as they leave for Istanbul while waiting to cross to Europe near Turkey’s western border with Greece and Bulgaria, in Edirne, on September, 23, 2015. (Photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Turkish police briefly set up barricades preventing the refugees from entering the area, and several hundred refugees were bussed out of the city to refugee camps and other cities against their will. There have also been reports of police violence against them.

Shawkat said he saw the police beat a woman in Edirne outside the camp who wanted to reach the border. “That woman cried so loud,” he said. “[There are] no rights here.”

Police detained three Syrians, one German, and one French citizen on September 21, accusing them of provoking the refugees and encouraging them to defy Turkish authorities. Local media accused them of working for foreign intelligence services.

The Media Line was there when Governor Şahin came to the ad-hoc camp and delivered a short speech, telling the refugees to leave Edirne. “It’s not safe for you to cross the borders,” he said. “That’s why we don’t let you.”

He was quickly interrupted by chants of “we just want to cross.”

Such calls were not heeded. Many of the refugees having despaired of Edirne concluded that the land bridge into Europe is closed, leaving the risky Aegean crossing as the next best option.

Al Sallakh said he and many others will now have to take what he calls the “death boats” from the Turkish coast to Greece. “It’s the only way to the EU,” he said, adding that it will take him a full year to save up the $2,500 needed to pay the people smugglers.