The coast guard officials of Türkiye and Greece have agreed to increase cooperation in curbing one of the main illegal migration routes into Europe, the authorities said Wednesday.
A Greek coast guard statement said Tuesday’s meeting on Greece’s eastern Aegean Sea island of Chios was the first of its kind in five years. It’s scheduled to be followed up in Türkiye in February 2025.
The talks came amid a gradual improvement in relations between the two historic regional rivals, following a low point in 2020 that saw a spike in military tensions over offshore gas exploration rights.
The statement said the coast guard officials agreed to increase cooperation in the field and exchange intelligence on organized migrant smuggling groups.
Every year, thousands of migrants risk the short but dangerous sea journey from Türkiye’s western coast to the eastern Greek islands, mostly in small, unseaworthy boats. Coming from the Middle East, Africa or Asia, they seek a better life in the European Union.
Greece’s minister for merchant marine, Christos Stylianides, said the Chios meeting “was held in an exceptional climate and we agreed on specific practical, operational conclusions” on limiting migratory flows and tackling smugglers.
The sea route from Türkiye’s western coasts to Greece is naturally the main choice of migrants, but it is also the most dangerous as the Mediterranean waters are not always safe for boats, let alone dinghies, a cheap way of transportation for most migrants.
Tricked by migrant smugglers to take the short route from Türkiye to Greece, migrants barely make it to the Greek waters before their boats are either caught or in danger of sinking amid bad weather.
The number of intercepted irregular migrants has increased since 2020, in proportion to more efficient work by the Turkish coast guard, which intercepted 56,954 irregular migrants and 169 smugglers in 2023.
Türkiye has also expanded its crackdown on migrant smuggling, capturing 31,931 smugglers between 2020 and 2023.
As of Oct. 10, 2024, some 9,761 smugglers have been detained nationwide. Türkiye hosts more than 4.4 million residents of foreign origin, including more than 3.1 million Syrians under temporary protection and another 228,290 people country under international protection status.
According to United Nations data, more than 52,000 people have entered Greece illegally so far this year, the vast majority by sea from Türkiye. That’s an increase from 2023, when nearly 49,000 migrants reached Greece between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31.
The rise in numbers is mainly due to a surge in people making the longer and more hazardous sea crossing from Libya, with nearly 4,000 arrivals so far from the North African country. Most head for the southern Greek island of Crete, off which, on Tuesday, 19 people were picked up from a small boat by a passing cargo ship.
The Greek coast guard said Wednesday that one of the people on the boat was arrested on suspicion of belonging to a migrant smuggling ring that had charged up to $6,500 (TL 223,384) for a berth on the vessel. It had set off from Tobruk in eastern Libya and was at sea for two days.
The central Mediterranean is the deadliest known migration route in the world, accounting for 80% of the deaths and disappearances in the Mediterranean.
More than 3,150 migrants died or disappeared in the Mediterranean last year, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration.