As the dead are counted and tears dried on the beach at Cutro, it’s time again to look at numbers and cards. Just as it is necessary to analyze what politics (didn’t) do in order to understand why we are once again witnessing another tragedy at sea.
The migratory route, passing through Greece and Turkey and reaching Italy via the Balkans, has certainly not stopped in recent years. But after the money that the European Union paid to the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after the building of the wall between Turkey and Greece, after the barriers set up by the Visegrád states, the mass pushbacks in Croatia and Trieste, this way is partially expired altered shape. And part of the migratory flow began two years ago to enter Calabria by sea along a dramatically dangerous route.
According to Frontex data, in 2022 there are 29,000 migrants on the Aegean route, of which 18,000 have landed in Italy. Only one in three landed in Greece and then tried to travel on overland via the Balkans. The rest went by sea. This route is populated by Afghans fleeing the fall of Kabul in August 2020, Syrians trying to leave behind a war that seems never to end, Pakistanis, Iraqis and Iranians looking for a life of rights. To this list we could now add those displaced by the earthquake on the Turkey-Syria border, a tragedy that left millions of people, especially Syrians, homeless. And that could increase the departures again.
It is no coincidence that Greece has tightened border controls along its land and sea border with Turkey in these hours. “The mass movement of millions of people is not a solution,” said Greek Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi, stressing the need to send emergency aid to Turkey and Syria “before that happens”. Mitarachi, the leader of the centre-right government, promised at a conference on European border management outside Athens on Friday that the expansion of a controversial wall along the land border would continue, whether EU-funded or not. The 22-mile, 16-foot-tall barrier will double in size by the end of the year. It also said it would buy dozens of new Coast Guard vessels to patrol the Aegean islands off Turkey’s coast. Mitsotakis, whose four-year term ends in July, was significantly tougher on the migration issue than his left-wing predecessor Alexis Tsipras. The government’s actions, including forced evictions or the deportation of refugees to border areas, have drawn strong criticism, not least from the EU.
In this scenario, the position of Ankara and especially that of Turkish President Recep Taypp Erdogan also weighs. In 2016, Brussels issued Ankara a check for 6 billion euros to ensure that the migration route to Europe was effectively halted. Other billions were provided by Brussels and by individual governments, including Italy. But thinking of stopping the currents with walls, barriers, barbed wire has so far proved a losing strategy. While arrivals along the eastern Mediterranean route were almost 98% lower in 2020 than in 2015, arrivals increased in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, arrivals accounted for 15% of the total, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Nations (UNHCR). . Of the 53,275 migrants who arrived in Italy in 2021, 7,900 ended up in Calabria.
And not only. After the earthquakes on the border between Turkey and Syria, the numbers could rise. Erdogan is due to vote in May and faces major challenges. First and foremost, rebuilding your country and dealing with the corruption that entails, but also dealing with the Syrian minority, which has a massive presence in the region hit by the earthquakes. So far, the sultan has extended aid to earthquake-hit Syrian areas where pro-Turkish militias operate, and has allowed homeless Syrian refugees to return to Turkey with a 3-month permit, a decision taken by at least 3,000 Syrians them decided to go home. But another 5 million refugees remain in Turkey and many more could arrive if the flow of aid to north-west Syria is not sufficient. And tensions with the country’s minority, which existed before the earthquake, threaten to worsen. Difficult, then, because Erdogan is not tackling the issue according to a scheme already in place, using refugees to put pressure on Europe while avoiding granting recognition of these rights to the Syrian minority, so as not to anger his constituency.