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License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Turkish asylum seekers allegedly being pushed back in small boats by Greece

By:   []

Date: 2021-12

Arriving back in Turkey

Of the three men, only Kurt, a 35-year-old dismissed Turkish soldier, was released from Turkish police custody the day after the pushback because a local court had previously acquitted him of being a member of the Gülen movement, a group Ankara accuses of being a terrorist organisation and of masterminding the failed 2016 Turkish coup. A prosecutor objected to the acquittal, however, and Kurt is awaiting a higher court’s decision.

Despite the local court’s acquittal, Kurt can’t live freely in Turkey. He is not allowed to leave Istanbul and has to sign in at a police station every week. If a higher court reverts his acquittal, he will be sentenced to at least six years and three months in jail. Thousands of Turkish nationals in the same position as Kurt have successfully had asylum applications accepted by the EU on the basis that there are no free trials in Turkey.

Even without the prosecutor’s objection, Kurt said he had little to return to following his acquittal: “I was fired from my job even though I am innocent. Despite the acquittal from a local court, my case is still going on in a higher court after a prosecutor objected to the decision.

“The court put a travel ban on me three years ago and I have had no freedom of movement. I had no choice but to leave Turkey because the demonisation was so bad it left me socially dead.”

The other two men who were pushed back with Kurt, Elvan Güzelkücük and Oguzhan Yatar, were immediately given Turkish prison sentences of six years and three months over allegations that they are members of the Gülen movement. They deny being members of Gülen or any organisation involved in terrorism.

Speaking with openDemocracy via Skype from Germany, Güzelkücük’s German wife, Muteber, explained why she and her husband had made the decision to leave Turkey in September. “The situation meant he was now demonised and discriminated against by society, and couldn’t live freely. He couldn’t find a job to survive and we decided we should move to Germany and apply for family reunification.”

Muteber said her German citizen status meant that Güzelkücük was granted German residency in September 2021, however a travel ban imposed on him by Ankara meant he could not legally leave Turkey. This left Güzelkücük with little choice but to attempt to reach Greece by crossing the Aegean Sea, Muteber said, so that he could fly to Germany and secure his residency.

Since 2016, tens of thousands of Turkish nationals like Güzelkücük have made it to the EU by crossing land or sea borders and applying for asylum. According to Germany’s agency for migration and refugees (BAMF), in 2019 Turkish asylum seekers were the third-most registered group, after Syrians and Iraqis.

Muteber added that when Güzelkücük spoke with her from prison after being pushed back to Turkey and arrested, he told her the Greek coast guard beat them so badly that he was “grateful to be alive, because we could have died in the Aegean”.

Since the failed 2016 coup, at least 600,000 people have been prosecuted over terrorism charges, and more than 1.5 million investigated, Turkish Justice Ministry announced earlier this year. Critics claim that Erdogan has “long used the coup to consolidate his grip on power”, with a 2020 Human Rights Watch report, finding that “terrorism charges continue to be widely misused”

Speaking to openDemocracy, Dr Lena Karamanidou of Glasgow Caledonian University, who has carried out field studies of pushbacks from Greece to Turkey, said: “Our research suggests that pushbacks have been taking place in the area for decades – and according to an earlier testimony of someone who did his military service there, pushbacks of Kurdish people go back as far as the late Eighties.”

Normalised practice

“As if we were war criminals, masked [Greek] soldiers queued us up and beat us with batons, then bundled us into a military lorry and drove us to Evros. [The river that separates Greece and Turkey.]

“I was shocked at how they behaved like human traffickers. When we got there, we were lined up in two rows with hands behind our necks, then marched to the river and forced on to a boat back to Turkey.”
[END]

[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/turkish-asylum-seekers-allegedly-being-pushed-back-in-small-boats-by-greece/
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