Sozdar. Credit: With permission from the family.On 29 November 2015, the European Union announced that a deal had finally been done to give Turkey €3 billion (£2.1 billion) and political concessions to solve Europe’s refugee problem by clamping down on its borders and preventing people leaving the country. In the usual protocol. the two leaders - the presidential host, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the visiting chancellor, Germany's Angela Merkel - posed for formal photographs.
But within hours, and away from the cameras, the Turkish authorities had rounded up some 1,300 Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi refugees who had been waiting in the countryside near Ayvacık, a Turkish town just a few kilometers across the Aegean Sea from Greece, for an opportunity to take a small flimsy dinghy to Lesvos in search of protection and a better life.
The right to claim asylum is enshrined in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Yet Amnesty International has documented a number of recent cases of refugees being forcibly returned to Syria and Iraq after being intercepted by Turkish border-guards while trying to reach the EU. The Ayvacık incident is part of this pattern.
