Six irregular migrants, including four children, drowned in the Aegean after their boat was illegally pushed back by Greek security forces, Turkish authorities said Saturday.
Local coast guard, emergency and gendarmerie teams rushed to help the boat with over a dozen people aboard off Ayvacık in northwestern Çanakkale province.
Authorities saved 15 irregular migrants, while the search for one missing person is still underway.
A total of 15 irregular migrants (seven children and eight adults) were rescued from the sea by an assigned coast guard boat and a fishing vessel and the dead bodies of six irregular migrants (four children and two adults) were found, said a Turkish Coast Guard Command statement.
According to the initial information shared by the irregular migrants, they were intercepted by the Hellenic Coast Guard in the vicinity of the island of Lesbos, their inflatable boat was punctured and they were pushed back at a point close to Turkish territorial waters as their boat took water in and started sinking, the statement added.
Türkiye has been a key transit point for migrants wanting to cross to Europe to start new lives.
Turkish authorities and human rights groups have repeatedly condemned Greece's illegal practice of pushing back asylum-seekers, saying it violates humanitarian values and international law by endangering the lives of vulnerable migrants, including women and children.
In his speech at the United General Assembly last week, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called out Greece for its "persecution" of migrants in the Aegean Sea and Eastern Mediterranean.
"While we struggle to prevent other babies, like Aylan, from washing up on the shores, Greece is turning the Aegean Sea into a graveyard for refugees with its unlawful and reckless pushbacks," said Erdoğan.
Aylan Kurdi was a 3-year-old Syrian refugee whose body washed ashore on a Turkish beach in 2015, with his photo becoming the defining image of the global refugee crisis.
"The refugee crisis cannot be solved by sinking the boats of innocents who set out to seek a better future, leaving them to die, and by building walls on borders, and filling concentration camps with people," he said.
"It is high time for Europe and the United Nations to put an end to these atrocities that constitute crimes against humanity."
"We expect Greece to shun its politics of provocations and heed our calls for cooperation," Erdoğan said.
Besides its inhumane pushbacks of irregular migrants, Greece also pursues "discriminatory and oppressive policies" against the Muslim Turkish minority, he added.
Türkiye hopes that Greece will stop these problematic actions and that international organizations, particularly the European Union, will stop turning a blind eye to its "inhuman and unlawful practices," Erdoğan stressed.
