Bordering on despair

Entry to the European Union is an all-too-tempting prize for Syrian refugees attempting to cross the border into Greece from Turkey. But once on the other side, uncertainty and possibly even police brutality awaits, Stephen Starr reports

Syrian and Greek protesters hold placards and flags in front of the parliament building in central Athens on April 6, 2013, in solidarity with the refugees who have fled the conflict in Syria and demaShow more

Outside the sleepy border town of Enez, in Turkey’s western most region, two local men in a tiny rowing boat fish idly for bream in the Evros Potamos river; one paddle stroke finds them in Turkey, the next in Greece. Overhead in a patrol tower, a young border guard plays with his mobile phone and chats with a farmer who has just butchered a sheep for the Eid Al Adha holiday.

Mohannad, a medical expert from the Syrian city of Hama, is haunted by the imaginary line that splits Turkey from Greece and all that it means. For him, it stands for trauma and humiliation following a failed bid to reach the European Union.

“Before we left Syria, we arranged with a guy on the internet to take us to Greece, but he proved to be untrustworthy, so we stopped dealing with him,” Mohannad said from an Istanbul apartment. “Our plan wasn’t to stay in Greece, but to go to Sweden.

“Then, last week, we met a group of Damascus people in a shop here in Istanbul. They told us they were planning to cross into Greece. We exchanged details. Three days later, I spoke to them on Viber – they had made it to Greece by walking across the border. We saw it happening with our own eyes for the first time,” he said.

In recent months, hundreds of migrants have lost their lives attempting to enter treasured EU territory, most memorably at the Italian island of Lampedusa, when more than 360 migrants drowned last October. The same month, hundreds of Syrian refugees had their vessel sunk by smugglers off Malta following a pay dispute. Dozens drowned.

But, even upon setting foot on hallowed European Union land, migrants face difficulties. In the first four months of last year, Greece arrested 1,709 Syrians for entering the country illegally. According to UN data, only two Syrians were granted asylum there the previous year. An Amnesty International report released in December found that 18 EU countries had failed to resettle a single Syrian refugee within their borders, while reports emerged also last month of 150 Syrian refugees disappearing from a Greek border town – thought to have been forcibly returned to Turkey by Greek police.

Nonetheless, Mohannad and five Syrian friends, including three kids less than 13 years old, decided to smuggle themselves to Greece, with the end goal of reaching Sweden.

“We arranged our things. A car was to come to Aksaray Square here in Istanbul and take us to the border. So we waited at the square for the smugglers to call us,” he said.

But when the smugglers arrived, the plan was changed and the Syrians were taken by bus to the border city of Edirne. A few hours later, they arrived at the Edirne bus station on the outskirts of the city.

“One of the smugglers said: ‘start walking, walking fast.’” Mohannad and his group began walking along a road until they reached the wide swamp that divides Turkey from Greece.

About 25 minutes later, they reached the river border. One of the smugglers unpacked and inflated a rubber boat. “The jungle was full of mud and trees, but it was safe. We saw dogs, farms. We saw a border guard 100 metres away from us, but it was safe where we were. The smuggler said: ‘be quiet, move slowly.’”

The group got on the tiny boat and paddled across. They reached Greece at 1.30am. Happy, but scared, they were on Greek land.

After walking for two-and-a-half hours, they arrived at an engine room used for irrigating crops. It was full of insects. Mohannad and the children tried to sleep, but it was too cold. Clothes from migrants who had made the trip in the recent past were everywhere. They stayed in the room until 8.30 the next morning.

“We walked, two at a time, towards the village [of Kastanies], carrying almost nothing. We reached the village at 10am. We crossed some train tracks and saw some shops and houses. I followed the smugglers’ directions, who had left us by now, but, although they gave us fake refugee documents [saying they had legal residence in Greece], they forgot to make documents for me! I was the guide now but without documents – without ID!” Mohannad said.

By now, they could see the bus station and a trip to Athens was within reach. Because Mohannad had no ID, the other man of the group, Imad, also from Hama, went instead to buy the bus tickets.

But disaster struck.

“I watched Imad from 100 metres away and followed him. But then I saw two policemen on motorbikes coming towards us. We tried to be calm but they stopped us. They began talking to us in Greek and I answered him in English.

“Where are you from?”

“Spain.”

“Give me your ID.”

“I left it in Athens,” said Mohannad.

Mohannad watched as the second policeman spoke with Imad and the others. He tried to bribe the police officer, conceding the truth – that he was Syrian and trying to get to Sweden.

“We were rounded up in an old police van. They took us to another place in the village. There was a Pakistani man there and we were all put together. They then moved us to another police van, a bigger one, and we tried to sleep there. They took our mobiles,” he said.

Mohannad and the group were in the van for about an hour as it trundled along the road.

“I looked out the window and saw we were back in the jungle again.

“We got out and were violently body searched. By now we could see the river again; we knew we were going back to Turkey. They took everything from us. We were in a small tent along with about 20 other people, many of them were Syrians, and one was an old woman in her 80s. We stayed there for about two hours with no food or water.”

The migrants were then divided into groups of men and women and put into two police vans. At 10pm, a van came and took the group to another area at the edge of the river. By then, the group had been in the custody of Greek police for 12 hours – without water or food.

“The police told us: ‘shush, be quiet.’ They told us to crouch down and began hitting us as we were ordered out of the truck. They even hit the old woman.

“I fell down and one policeman hit me on my forehead with the barrel of his pistol. They told us to move quietly towards the river. ‘Be quiet,’ they whispered as they kicked us. Then they pushed us all on to a boat. We were very scared, we felt we were not humans – I can’t describe it,” he said.

A police officer drove the boat to the Turkish side of the river and it was there group was abandoned.

“We started to walk through the jungle, but it was all mud. The old Syrian woman kept slipping. It was freezing, and we stared screaming for help.”

One among the group had a phone and called the Turkish police. “The Turkish police kept calling us back asking us where we were. They said they could track us through the mobile signal. At this time we felt without any hope,” said Mohannad.

They lit a large fire in the swamp to keep warm, and managed to sleep through the night – about 20 bodies tightly huddled together. Some from the group left during the night and disappeared into the darkness. The next morning, Mohannad’s group, now with several new Syrians, started walking again. After about 30 minutes, the Turkish military police came upon them in the depths of the swamp.

“‘Don’t worry, my friends,’ one officer told us. ‘Don’t worry – you are safe now.’ They took us to a hospital in Edirne and then back to Istanbul,” said Mohannad, smoking his fifth cigarette of the interview.

The group of six lost a total of US$3,500 (Dh12,850) to the smugglers. On numerous occasions when speaking to Mohannad and Imad in Istanbul they asked, jokingly at first, if I would sell them my passport. Their perception of a new life in Sweden boarded on the farcical, but clearly the alternatives are so much worse.

Greek police spokesman Christos Parthenis said in November that no incidents of pushing back foreigners to Turkey by the Greek police force or by the Frontex border agency have taken place.

“Our aim is to address mixed migration flows at the entry points of Greek territory in a way that ensures both the need for border control towards irregular migration and the need to provide protection to refugees,” he said.

Today, Mohannad is back in Syria with his family, his hopes and dreams crushed. With an imminent solution to the war unlikely, his prospects, as for millions of other Syrians, are grim. “I respect if they [in Europe] have a bad economy,” said Mohannad. “OK, then get rid of Bashar Al Assad.”

Stephen Starr is the author of Revolt in Syria: Eye-Witness to the Uprising. He now lives in Istanbul.