An international commission must probe the pushback of migrants by Greece in the East Mediterranean, the spokesperson for Türkiye’s ruling Justice and Development (AK Party) said Monday as he slammed Greece’s illegal and life-threatening policy.
Last week, a boat sinking off the coast of southwestern Greece left at least 80 irregular migrants dead – mostly from Pakistan, Egypt and Syria – and 500 others missing in the Mediterranean Sea, feared drowned.
Only 104 people are known to have survived.
“There should now be an international investigation commission and a team of international observers to carry out observations in that region,” spokesperson Ömer Çelik said after a meeting of the party’s Central Executive Board (MYK) in Ankara.
The Greek coast guard, employing both uniformed and non-uniformed individuals, intentionally punctures migrant boats and leaves them to their fate, aiming to push them toward either Turkish or Italian waters, Çelik added.
“The actions carried out by the Greek Coast Guard now need to be investigated as direct acts of crimes against humanity. They are trying to kill people, and they are killing them,” Çelik stressed.
Condemning those who remain silent and turn a blind eye to these actions, Çelik said, “This is, unfortunately, a shameful hypocrisy, a double standard. The Greek coast guard is turning the Mediterranean into a migrant graveyard in front of everyone’s eyes.”
According to human rights watchdogs, the Greek coast guard might have ignored SOS signals from the boat, while some survivors say the coast guard might have tried to tow the boat into Italian waters.
Greek authorities said the vessel, which they had been monitoring for about 15 hours, capsized about 25 minutes after its engine stalled in the early hours of June 14.
They said occupants of the vessel repeatedly refused offers of assistance, though international agencies, including Amnesty International, have called for greater clarity from Greece over the tragedy and whether enough was done to prevent it.
While a retired Greek admiral blamed the country’s coast guard for not responding to the tragedy in time, the United Nations urged the European Union (EU) to take action to prevent more migrant deaths in the region, stressing that the current approach to the issue was “unworkable.”
Survivors, however, said the Greek coast guard was “directly involved and might have caused” the deadly shipwreck, according to an EU lawmaker.
“Greek authorities knew that a ship carrying asylum-seekers was in danger in their waters but didn’t start the rescue for hours,” Erik Marquardt, a German Member of the European Parliament from the Green Group, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
“Some survivors even indicate that the Greek coast guard was directly involved and might have caused the shipwreck,” he added.
Europe is building a “wall of lies” about what happens at its borders, said Marquardt, who is a key EU lawmaker on migration policy as vice-chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Development and a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
He said the latest incident in Greek waters “is quite usual,” as people are dying daily at the EU’s external borders while “authorities don’t comply with the international law of the sea.”
An independent investigation could ascertain the exact details of the tragedy, he noted.
Türkiye and many in the international community and global rights groups have repeatedly condemned Greece’s illegal practice of pushing back irregular migrants, saying it violates humanitarian values and international law by endangering the lives of vulnerable migrants, including women and children.
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.
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).
In early 2023 alone, the Greek coast guard 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.
