The Turkish government has claimed to have stopped over 1,7000 illegal immigrants from reaching Europe in the month of March, and stopped a boat with 168 illegals aboard heading to Italy this week.
On Tuesday, Turkish officials claimed to have stopped a boat full of 168 illegal immigrants heading from Turkey to Italy on a fishing boat in the Aegean Sea off the coast of the province of Izmir, arresting two people said to have been the organizers of the illegal trip.
Turkish Deputy Interior Minister Ismail Catakli has further claimed that authorities have stopped a total of 17,587 illegal immigrants from reaching Europe in the month of March and added that Turkish law enforcement has arrested 759 people accused of being involved in people trafficking, the newspaper Hurriyet reports.
According to the Turkish Interior Ministry, 24,013 of the illegals apprehended by Turkish authorities this year have been from Afghanistan, while 8,198 have been Syrian nationals. At least 3.7 million Syrians remain in Turkey after fleeing the conflict in Syria that began in 2011.
Since 2016, the European Union has been engaged in a deal with Turkey to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and has paid billions of euros to the country to ensure there is not a repeat of the 2015 migrant crisis, which saw over a million people cross from Turkey into Greece from 2015 to early 2016.
In early 2020, just prior to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, Turkey decided to open the gates to Europe after noting that the European Union had not fulfilled some of the agreements in the migrant deal, such as visa-free access to the EU for Turkish nationals.
While the border was eventually closed again due to the pandemic, the European Union decided last year to give Turkey billions of euros more, agreeing to send €3 billion (£2.5 billion/$3.6 billion) over the next few years for Syrians living in Turkey as well as to help Turkey maintain its own southern border.
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