Case name: 20220223-Eastern Med-862
Situation: 11 travellers were pushed back from Greece to Turkey near Kos, back in Turkey
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case:
On 23 February 2022 the Alarm Phone received a call from relatives of 11 travellers in the Aegean Sea. They had lost contact to the boat after they had received a GPS-location in the area of Kos in Turkish waters. We were not able to establish direct contact with the travellers.

At 8:40h CET the shift team alerted Turkish coastguard by phone and by email. The Turkish coastguard  stated that they had rescued 64 people (61 Palestinian and 3 Togolese nationality) from three rubber boats off the coast of Bodrum district, Mugla Province at 07:05h CET. They could not say, if the boat we were asking for was among those rescued. At 15:23h CET the same day we finally managed to speak with a young woman from the boat. They were detained in Turkey and still under shock. She reported:

“We were heading towards the Greek island of Kos. At eight o'clock in the morning we reached the Greek sea, and the Greek patrol found us. They searched us and took our phones and beat the young men and terrified the children and women and then they broke the engine and took us back towards the Turkish sea. We stayed at sea for about an hour and suffered from high waves before the Turkish guards came to rescue us. Our boat was carrying 11 people, all of them from Palestine.”