Highlights
- EU and Turkey to revisit deal on preventing migration to Europe via Greece
- Results of the policy shift have been mixed in numbers and dire on human level, according to a five-years account of the refugee crisis in Greece
- The journalist who published the findings argues EU’s current response to forced migration resembles its Australian counterpart
The EU-Turkey deal has shaped Europe's response to the refugee crisis since 2015. A landmark year with over one million sea arrivals reaching Europe - mainly Greece and Italy - across the Aegean Sea in the Mediterranean.
The UNHCR estimated that half of those making the dangerous journey were Syrian, fleeing the war in their country, followed by Afghans and Iraqis.
Greece, hit by economic recession and high unemployment, was unprepared to respond to such an influx of people seeking protection. Finalised on 18th March 2016, the declared aim of the agreement was to “end the irregular migration from Turkey to the EU” via the Greek islands.
Melbourne-born Zoe Holman moved to Greece just a few months after the deal came into effect.
Migrants, who were lost in an open sea, ask for help from members of the Frontex, as they try to approach in a dinghy the Greek island of Lesbos. Dec, 2015. Source: AAP
She describes it as a turning point in “reflecting a kind of closure on the part of the EU” and its open-door policy that allowed individuals to travel freely from islands to EU destinations to claim asylum.
What’s in a deal?
Under the agreement, all “new irregular migrants” crossing to Greek shores would be returned to Turkey.
The crux of the deal? A so-called ‘one-for-one' scheme for Syrian refugees: for every returned Syrian refugee, another Syrian in Turkey would be resettled in Europe.
In return, the Turkish government was promised $6 billion in financial aid to host refugees and a number of political perks, including revival of EU accession talks.
To avoid breaching , the EU listed Turkey – a signatory to the Refugee Convention with the reservation of granting refugee status only to Europeans - as ‘a safe country’ for returns.
Within days, the UN rights chief warned the EU about “a contradiction at the heart of the agreement”. Concerns were also raised over arbitrary detention of refugees and migrants, given the geographical restriction on Greek islands until the processing of their asylum claim, with waiting times ranging from months to years.
Migrants sleep outside on Victoria Square, Athens, Greece, September 10, 2015. Approximately 2,500 had travelled that day by ferry from Lesvos island to Athens Source: Milos Bicanski/Getty Images
“I don’t think people could see how extreme things could become, but definitely there were a lot of protests and a sense that this going to make the islands a kind of a border zone themselves, that people will be stranded there,” Ms Holman says, recalling public sentiment in Greece in 2016.
The Australian journalist, who previously worked in the Middle East, had just relocated from London to Athens.
Watching the unfolding situation in Greece closely, she started collecting stories of those seeking refuge, locals, NGO workers, actors involved in the asylum processes and keeping track of data.
She put these together in a book to “document the human impact of the EU border regime”.
‘Where the Water Ends’ was published this month, coinciding with the five-year anniversary of the EU-Turkey deal, which “from a Greek perspective”, Ms Holman says, “could at first be hailed a statistical success”.
Refugees wait in front of the Greek border at Pazarkule gate, in Edirne, Turkey, on March 01, 2020. Source: AAP
Island versus mainland interplay
A year after the agreement, arrivals to the islands dropped by about a quarter compared to 2015.
But the “marked reduction”, she notes, came with an understated rise in people reaching Europe through Spain and Italy.
It became a rather temporary ‘success story’ followed by a steady increase and a record 2019 arrivals nearly matching totals of 2017 and 2018 combined.
“In the aftermath of the deal there was also an increase in the number of crossings from the [Turkish-Greek] land border from the Evros region,” Ms Holman says.
Rerouting of migration flows through land crossings, when convoys of people in the thousands had gathered on the Turkish side of the frontier.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had declared the opening of the country’s borders to pressure the EU, claiming that the bloc hadn’t kept its side of the 2016 bargain.
But the Evros river crossing at the northern Greek-Turkish border was already .
Ms Holman cites NGO reports and accounts of observers about the “unofficial but well established” tactic, writing that “almost every documented account of a pushback from Greece features violence, in the form of beatings and verbal abuse by authorities – including of women and small children.”
Allegations of pushback operations in the sea from Greece are more commonly reported over the years, with some .
“I think in general there has been a huge focus on the islands,” Ms Holman says.
Sea and land arrivals in Greece from neighbouring Turkey for 2021 so far (map last updated on 7 March) Source: UNHCR Operational Data Portal
“I mean, for good reason, but at the same time, it means there’s been less visibility for developments on the mainland.”
Coverage has been skewed in a certain direction, “even within the islands”, she adds, with Moria camp in Lesvos being the one “you hear about consistently in the mainstream media.”
‘EU’s worst rights issue’
Greece has had five so-called ‘hotspots’ established in the Aegean islands of Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos.
Moria camp is not the only one where occupancy has been consistently exceeding capacity and hygiene standards aren’t met, nor the only one with incidents of violence and abuse.
The camp’s lion’s share in the media spotlight is attributed to factors including damning mental health crisis reports, overcrowding exceeding five times its capacity, and having been labelled ‘EU’s worst rights issue’.
In September, two fires destroyed its accommodation facilities leaving 13,000 people without shelter.
Piles of garbage at a makeshift camp next to the Moria camp in Lesbos, Greece, as seen prior to the fires that destroyed the facilities in September 2020 Source: MANOLIS LAGOUTARIS/AFP via Getty Images
A new ‘permanent’ centre is underway with locals recently holding their first organised protest against the Greek government’s plan.
“I think for the islanders it’s a much more nuanced situation," Ms Holman says.
"It’s really affecting their everyday lives and in some ways, we can maybe say, they feel like political playing pieces for Athens that is not living the reality of islanders."
Review underway for ‘Australian-style’ outsourcing
On her first visit to Lesvos, the journalist recalls finding the detention site looking somewhat familiar.
“The first time I saw Moria camp, I thought Baxter [a former South Australian detention centre]. This is symbolically a recreation of what Australia has been for the past decades.
“And I think it’s become more and more explicit over the last few years that the EU really looks to Australia as a way of paradigm for refugee policy.”
In a 2019 statement, a Greek MP of the European Parliament elected with Greece’s governing party specifically referred to “Australian-style methods”.
“If the orchestrated by Erdogan influx of refugees & migrants continues, I think we should implement Australian-style methods. Arrivals will then be trapped in a remote, uninhabited or sparsely populated island. Once news spread about this, they will stop coming.”
The idea of deterrence, Ms Holman argues, is one of the “many direct parallels” between the Australian and the European policies.
The rationale behind this is “we’re going to do this because if we don’t more people will come, there’s going to be a pull factor if we make it a welcoming environment.
“Which is exactly the platform Australia has adopted, the [motto] ‘you won’t call Australia home’”.
The pushback of boats from Greece to Turkey, she says, is also following the Australian blueprint of Operation Sovereign Borders.
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“And this is part of a general outsourcing of migration to third parties, be it Papua New Guinea, or Turkey or Libya, this sense that we don’t want this thing and therefore we’re going to invest in making it someone else’s mess.”
The future of the EU-Turkey agreement is expected to be discussed in an upcoming European Council of meeting of heads of states on March 25th and 26th.
But officials in Ankara and Berlin have already commenced backstage negotiations for a new deal, according to German newspaper Handelsblatt, which also cites a ‘mixed feelings’ response by Athens for being left out of the talks.
Ms Holman believes the core of the EU-Turkey deal arrangements will remain unchanged.
“Particularly during the pandemic, there is a great reticence on the part of the EU,” she says pointing to the new camp in Lesvos as indicative of EU’s commitment “to continue to invest in the situation in Greece.”
“Keeping people waiting on the islands doesn’t create a functional system […] On a human level, we can say it’s been a successful experiment of cruelty.
“This is something that strikes me in Europe, like in Australia, that despite this myth of deterrence we can see people are not going to stop coming. So it’s not really a solution to forced migration, this deterrence-detention model.”
