Traffickers find alternative route via Italy

Turkey recently struck a deal with the EU to take back all migrants and refugees crossing illegally to Greece in exchange for monetary aid, expedited visa-free travel for Turks, and accelerated EU membership talks.
 The deal with Ankara however hinges on Turkey being deemed a safe country of asylum, which Amnesty said is clearly not the case. The London-based organization says around 100 Syrian refugees have been forcibly expelled from Turkey each day since the middle of January, flouting international law.
 Most of those deported to Syria appear to be unregistered refugees, though Amnesty says it also saw cases of registered Syrians being returned as well.
 The rights group based its allegations on testimonies it had gathered in Turkey’s southern border provinces.
 “In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have willfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s Director for Europe and Central Asia.
 Amnesty also says Turkey has scaled back the registration of Syrian refugees in the southern provinces, making it impossible for them to access basic services.

Advertisements of trips between Turkey and Italy

Turkey-based smugglers have begun to re-advertise trips between Turkey and Italy, in the first hint of a shift in migration patterns since the EU agreed a deal to deport any refugees landing in Greece.
 In an advert on Facebook, smugglers claimed that the first boat to Italy would leave this weekend from the port of Mersin. They offered places for $4,000 per person, four times the cost of a journey from Turkey to Greece.
 “The trip is on Saturday, from Mersin to Italy, on a merchant ship 110 metres long, equipped with food, water, life jackets and medicine,” the post read, accompanied by photographs of a cargo ship.
 Reacting to the ad, some refugees raised the possibility of the scheme being a scam, since scores of would-be migrants were tricked in 2014 and 2015 by people posing as organisers of similar trips.
 In response, the ad’s author claimed that passengers’ money would be held by a third party trusted by both the smugglers and passengers, meaning that the former stood to gain little if their clients failed to arrive in Italy.
 Whatever the truth, the development nevertheless indicates increased demand for alternative routes to Europe now that it has become harder to leave Turkey for Greece.
 Migrant arrivals to Italy since the start of 2016 are higher than the equivalent periods in both 2015 and 2014, when record numbers landed in southern Italy.
 About 18,200 people have already arrived since 1 January, compared with 10,000 over the same periods in 2014 and 2015, according to figures released by the Italian government.
 There is not yet a correlation between the rise in these arrivals and the crackdown on crossings between Greece and Turkey.

source: DW, The Guardian