Turkey: Evacuation of Migrants From the Border Crossing and Burning of Their Tents

On Friday, the Turkish government announced that it had cleared the Bazarkouli border crossing of migrants who had hoped to cross into Greece and enter European territory.

About a month after the media hype caused by the Turkish President to open the borders of his country to migrants and the Greek authorities violently dealing with them, the Turkish authorities burned the tents of these migrants and moved them to shelters, as a precautionary measure to avoid the outbreak of the Coronavirus, according to the official version.

The Associated Press agency estimated the number of migrants at the Bazarkuli land crossing at about 2.000 people.

Turkish Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu confirmed that “Turkey has evacuated about 4.800 asylum seekers who were waiting at the border with Greece”, but that this number announced by Soylu may lack accuracy , given that the Turkish authorities prevented all the media from entering the gathering point for migrants at the Pazarköli crossing, except for the official Turkish agencies.

According to the Turkish news agency “Demeron”, the asylum seekers were evacuated, on Thursday evening, by buses to facilities distributed in different Turkish cities, to put them in quarantine for two weeks and to ensure that they did not catch the new Coronavirus, adding that the evacuation process was “at the request of the migrants”.

In conjunction with the panic that prevailed among the migrants, videos circulated showing the Turkish authorities burning the tents of the migrants at the Bazarkouli border crossing.

Among these videos, a video clip that did not exceed 10 minutes, a Syrian youth tried to document the process of violence by the Turkish authorities burning their tents saying: “I feel afraid as I am filming … they prevent us from filming… I might be arrested and beaten if one of the gendarmes sees me”, a woman’s voice shouts and screams a young man “make a way”. Several women and children appeared to be trying to get away from the crowds and blazing fires.

 

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