Türkiye engaged into “migration diplomacy” with Greece: Turkish Minister

“We are making the wall impassable,” says Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya in an interview to YetkinReport, adding “We have prevented 88,854 people from crossing the Syrian border since we took office. We have audio recordings of smugglers that we listened to with a court order; there are those who tried 15 times and complained of not being able to cross.”

During our conversation later in the evening on October 23, Yerlikaya had briefings and instructions from Okay Memiş, the head of AFAD, Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, who recently been employed in El Ariş, Egypt (together with Red Crescent Director General İbrahim Altan) to oversee humanitarian aid to Gaza.

We return to the issue of illegal migration on the Syrian border. During this period, 130,285 irregular migrants were apprehended in 2,841 irregular migration operations, 56,31 were deported and the rest were still being processed.

“We did not only target irregular migrants, but mostly smugglers,” says Minister Yerlikaya; “Some of them started to return on their own. More importantly, the smuggling routes to Europe started to shift from Turkey to North Africa.”

Migration diplomacy with Greek minister

When it comes to irregular migration to Europe, the first thing that comes to mind is Greece accusing Turkey of not stopping illegal migrants and Turkey accusing Greece of “pushing back” illegal migrant boats.

If the route has shifted to North Africa via Turkey, it is necessary to ask what the situation is not only on Turkey’s southern but also on its western borders.

“We are bringing it to a standstill,” Yerlikaya said sharing the “migration diplomacy” with Greece behind closed doors in the last month.

Yerlikaya said following:

We had a meeting with Dimitris Kairidis, Greece’s Minister of Migration and Asylum, on September 19th. I said, ‘We will not send you even one person for a month, and you should not push us back even one person’. He agreed. We told the Coast Guard to ‘push back.’ We made a similar agreement with Bulgaria.

We sent two battalions of soldiers, gendarmerie, to the Greek and Bulgarian borders. Our soldiers formed a human wall along the thw two birders. At one point Bulgaria sent about 100 people in one day, we said, ‘We will break the agreement’, they immediately corrected it.

A few days ago the Greek Minister came to Ankara. We were right. Not a single person crossed the border in this month.”

Smugglers and irregular migrants deter from Turkish route

“Sometimes we are criticized for this,” continued Yerlikaya, “‘Why are you blocking them? Let them go’ they tell us. But thanks to this, both smugglers and irregular migrants have started to deter from the Turkish route. When you control the entry points, it becomes easier to take them under control.”

According to Yerlikaya, the secret of this “ease” lies in “political will, current work and cooperation”.

Political will, means the support of President Tayyip Erdoğan. Throughout the conversation, Yerlikaya made it clear that he received Erdoğan’s approval for all critical steps.

Cooperation and teamwork, according to the Minister, means “coordination not only with the Interior Ministry units, police, gendarmerie, coast guard, but also with the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, National Defense, Justice and MIT”.

I reminded the meeting which was almost like a “war council”, held in the office of Yaşar Güler, the Minister of National Defense, after the PKK attack on the Ministry of Interior on October 1; Yerlikaya was probably referring to that kind of functioning.

“We work together not only in the fight against irregular migration,” Yerlikaya added, “but also in the fight against terrorism, drugs and mafias.”

We cannot be both transit and destination

Thus, Yerlikaya emphasized that he did not see the fight against illegal migration as separate from the fight against terrorism, drugs and mafias, and summarized the situation by saying, “We do not want to be both a transit and a destination country.” “We still have steps to take.”

When I asked, “Weren’t these things being done before?”, he said, “I am telling you about our own period.” He did not hide his effort to make a direct reference to the Süleyman Soylu era. However, he made it clear that the reassignment of 57 governors and the changes in the Security Directorate provided the ground for what he wanted to do and that the restructuring process was being completed.

Latest migrant numbers:

According to the records of the Ministry of Interior, the latest data on regular migrants between June 1, 2023 and October 2023 are as follows:

• Number of Syrians under temporary protection: 3 million 264 thousand 248.
• Those staying with residence permit: 1 million 136 thousand 114.
• Those staying under international protection: 256 thousand 573.
• Total number of regular migrants: 4 million 656 thousand 935
• The number of foreigners who left Turkey after their visa, visa exemption or residence period expired was 143 thousand 725.