The Turkish Coast Guard Command Wednesday came to the rescue of 94 irregular migrants in separate incidents in yet more instances of illegal pushbacks by Greece.

Twenty-three migrants were pulled from life rafts and inflatable boats after being pushed by Greek forces into Turkish territorial waters, off the coast of Dikili and Seferihisar districts in the western Izmir province, the coast guard said in a statement.

Another group of some 58 irregular migrants pushed back by Greece was rescued off the coast of Kuşadası district in Türkiye's Aydın province, it added.

The coast guard found five other migrants in a lifeboat off the coast of Muğla province's Datça district and eight more off the coast of Bodrum district.

The migrants were taken to the provincial migration management directorate.

Greece has long been under fire for its illegal, often inhumane and sometimes deadly practice of pushbacks – summary deportations of migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum.

The Greek government denies all allegations, despite claims to the contrary from alleged victims, rights groups, Turkish drones and even the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants.

"In Greece, pushbacks at land and sea borders have become the de facto general policy," the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe Gonzalez Morales, said last year.

Similarly, many in the international community, including Türkiye, which attracts illegal migrants worldwide for being a key gateway to Europe, have frequently condemned the practice as a violation of humanitarian values and international law for endangering the lives of vulnerable migrants.

A New York Times report, which was based on a video provided by an activist, made public two days before Greece's parliamentary election last month, exposed such instance. It alleged that in early April a group of migrants were brought by van to a Lesbos beach and then taken by speedboat to a coast guard vessel.

The coast guard allegedly left the migrants on a raft at sea from which the Turkish coast guard picked them up before transporting them to Türkiye.

Ylva Johansson, the EU commissioner for home affairs, said after the report was released that the EU has formally asked Athens to "fully and independently" investigate the incident.

Following backlash over the video, he said his administration was investigating the pushback "claim" and assured he was taking the incident "very seriously."

A tough stance against immigration is a key plank of former Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis' election platform. Earlier in the campaign, the prime minister traveled to the land border with Türkiye where he vowed to extend a 5-metre-high (16.40-foot-high) steel fence to contain the inward migration flow.

Greece has also been accused of deliberately and systematically cooperating with the EU's border agency Frontex for the pushbacks, according to a 2022 investigation by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF).

While the Turkish coast guard has come to the rescue of thousands sent back by Greek authorities, countless others died at sea as boats full of refugees sank or capsized, especially in the Aegean Sea where both countries share a border.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) recorded nearly 2,000 migrants dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea last year.

A report by Türkiye’s Ombudsman Institution said in July 2022 that Greece had pushed back about 42,000 migrants since 2020.

Between Jan. 1 and Dec. 16, 2022, the Turkish Coast Guard Command’s Aegean Command Station saved 47,498 irregular migrants in 1,550 separate cases across its areas of jurisdiction, over 18,000 of whom were victims of Greece’s pushback policy.

In early 2023 alone, Greek coast guards pushed back hundreds of migrants trying to cross the Aegean, causing at least nine deaths in two shipwrecks near Türkiye’s western shores in March.

Athens consistently denies the accusations despite abundant migrant testimonies, media evidence and international scrutiny. Mitsotakis since coming into office in 2019 has vowed to make his country "less attractive" to asylum-seekers.

The migrant crisis in the Aegean and the broader Mediterranean remains unsolved.