Around 14,000 people crossed the Evros frontier from January through September of this year according to the Greek police. Around half of them were Turkish citizens. Many are judges, military personnel, civil servants or business people who have fallen under Turkish authorities’ suspicion, had their passports canceled and chosen an illegal route out.
A father runs across the park, his seven-year-old daughter in tow and all his worldly possessions crammed into two overloaded backpacks, one on each shoulder. This scientist and assistant professor is one of many stateless souls making do in Athens, where they landed by inflatable raft after escaping persecution, incarceration and psychological, sometimes also physical, torture in their beloved homeland of Turkey.
I extend my sincere condolences to the families, relatives and friends of the deceased. I pray to God, the Most Compassionate, to provide perseverance for those who still are searching for their missing loved ones as well as those who continue the rescue and firefighting efforts.
A woman and her three children went missing after a boat carrying several Turkish asylum seekers who fled Turkey due to an ongoing government crackdown on followers of the Gülen movement capsized in the Evros River along the Turkey-Greece border on Wednesday night, Euronews Turkish reported.
“Our decision to come to Greece developed very suddenly. I did not want to leave my country that I loved so much. Especially it gives different meaning if you have your parents and relatives still live there. It was very difficult to leave the country, but the persecution was also accelerated on the one hand. Every day, we read news about tortures under custody and prisons on the media…
Erdogan’s aggressive policies, which have driven many Turks into exile, seem to have had an unintentional side-effect. “A bridge is being built between Turks and Greeks,” the English teacher says. “We’re learning to overcome prejudices and historical misunderstandings.”
A.T.S told that their next plan was to live in a state where no pressure and tyranny would harm them anymore. “We want to go to a country where we can live humanely, where our children can receive good education, where there is no pressure and tyranny.”
Esma Uludağ, a 35-year-old Turkish woman who fled to Greece due to an ongoing government-led crackdown on the followers of the Gülen movement, died of a heart attack on Saturday night as she was waiting to join her husband in Germany.