Turks Fleeing To Greece Find Mostly Warm Welcome, Despite History


Date posted: December 28, 2017

JOANNA KAKISSIS

Sumeyye Nur and her elderly parents were driving outside Izmir, Turkey, last summer when two plainclothes policemen pulled them over, demanding to know why her 75-year-old father owned a nice car.

It was no ordinary stop. It was part of a crackdown after last year’s failed military coupagainst the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The police arrested Nur’s father for having money in what the government now deemed a “terrorist bank.”

“He stayed eight months in prison,” says the 41-year-old former civil servant, who worked as a graphic designer and arts writer for government-owned media. “You cannot imagine the conditions. Terrible. Overcrowded. And not everybody has a bed. And these people are doctors, teachers, professors.”

The government fired Nur and canceled her passport. Her father told her to get out of Turkey. She paid a smuggler roughly $6,000 to cross the Evros River into neighboring Greece, a country that’s had a historically tense relationship with Turkey.

Nur now lives in a hostel in the northern city of Thessaloniki and works as a translator.

“I came last January,” she says. “When I came here, there were like 10 families.”

Now, at least 1,000 Turkish citizens are seeking refuge in Greece, according to the refugee support nonprofit SolidarityNOW. It’s hard to pin down an exact number because not many have applied for asylum, says Antonis Spathis, a human rights lawyer in Thessaloniki. The Greek Asylum Service told NPR that 186 Turkish citizens applied for asylum in 2016 and noted there has been a “significant” increase in 2017, but did not provide figures, saying those will be available in early 2018.

“Many are in hiding and don’t want to risk revealing themselves by seeking help from the Greek authorities,” says Spathis, who has advised several Turkish citizens who have fled to Greece since last summer’s attempted coup. “Some came to Greece with the intention of going on to other European countries or the U.S., but those pathways are closing.”

The Greek government spokesman, Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, declined to comment specifically on Turks seeking refuge in Greece, saying it’s up to the country’s independent asylum service to decide the status of any refugee applications. “We will follow all the legal provisions of international agreements and laws that regulate the asylum process,” he says.

Most Turkish citizens who have fled to Greece are living off their savings, unable to work unless they are granted asylum or a residency permit. A few have enough money to buy property.

And many of the Turks Spathis has met worry that they will never be able to return because, he says, “Erdogan is too powerful. They’ve lost hope that this will change.”

“I am not a terrorist”

These Turks include Cevheri and Tuba Guven, journalists who fled Istanbul last summer with their two young children.

“It’s impossible now to criticize in any way the government,” says Tuba, a 36-year-old former reporter and producer for Turkish public television. “If you write something on Twitter, you go directly to prison.”

At a cafe near Thessaloniki’s port, a Greek waiter greets the Guvens by name. They’ve made friends here. Their children are thriving in public school.

Cevheri, 40, used to run NOKTA (“point” in Turkish), a weekly political news magazine. He’s the reason the family fled. He published a cover unflattering to Erdogan and live-tweeted his own arrest.

“There were many charges brought against me,” he says. “Starting a civil war. Making terror propaganda. Arming people against the government. And trying to bring down the government. That last charge, that’s what I was found guilty of.”

He was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Before he could be jailed, the couple paid a Syrian smuggler $17,000 for fake passports and passage across the river marking the land border with Greece.

Tuba says she wept as they crossed. “I kept thinking, ‘I have done nothing against my state,’ ” she says. “OK, I have different ideas, different opinions, but I am not a terrorist. And I have done nothing illegal to my state, to my country, to my people.”

Once they arrived on Greek territory, a Turkish taxi driver took them to a Greek police station in the northern city of Orestiada so they could request asylum.
Tuba was worried.

“You know, because of the historical problems, we always think the other is the enemy,” she says. “I thought maybe [the Greeks] don’t like me because I am Turk. But it’s a very false idea. I was living the worst day of my life, completely worst day of my life. They welcomed me.”

“We are brothers”

Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years. The Greeks and Turks fought bloody wars as the empire fell. As recently as 1996, Turkey and Greece almost went to war over Imia (Kardak in Turkish), an uninhabited islet in the Aegean Sea.

Relations improved after Greece helped Turkey recover from a devastating earthquake in 1999 that killed 17,000 people.

Yet problems over issues like territorial borders remain.

“We have daily incidents in the Aegean of Turkey’s fighter planes [entering] into Greek airspace,” says Thanos Dokos, director of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy in Athens. “Turkey is also disputing the sovereignty of an undefined number of islets and small islands in the Aegean, saying that we need to produce historical proof of ownership.”

And though Greece strongly backs Turkey’s bid to join the European Union, Dokos says that support is grounded in the idea that a Turkey inside the EU would “have to resolve any territorial differences with its neighbors.”

Despite the political problems, he says, “relations between the Greek and Turkish people have always been quite warm.”

Hundreds of thousands of Turks vacation in Greece every year. Many head to Thessaloniki to see the pink, three-story house where Turkey’s modern founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was born. Thessaloniki Mayor Yiannis Boutaris has aggressively courted Turkish tourists and promised to restore Ottoman landmarks.

“I always say we are brothers with the Turks,” Boutaris recently told Turkey’s Anadolu Agency. “We have the same history and the same culture. We fought each other a lot of times, but the past must be left behind.”

A safe haven?

Most of the Turkish asylum-seekers NPR spoke to say they feel safe in Greece.
But Ali, a former literature professor and scholar of the 13th-century poet Rumi, is afraid to give his last name.

Ali supports Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric living in exile in Pennsylvania. Erdogan blames Gulen for the attempted coup; Gulen denies any involvement. Ali has heard stories of Erdogan agents kidnapping Gulen supporters exiled in Malaysia and Pakistan.

“His intelligence service is taking the Gulen sympathizers from the countries illegally,” he says. “So I am afraid.”

Spathis, the human rights lawyer, says some Turks also grew distressed after Erdogan pressed Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to hand over eight Turkish military officers who fled to Greece by helicopter after the failed coup. Erdogan seemed to ignore a ruling by the Greek Supreme Court that the soldiers cannot be extradited to Turkey because they will not get a fair trial there.

A Greek human rights group also says it has credible evidence of Greek authorities sending back at least one Turk, Murat Capan, managing editor of the same magazine that Cevheri Guven led. (The Greek government denies this.) Capan is now in a Turkish jail.

Tuba Guven says she’s heard of more Turks choosing to cross the Aegean to Greece because of increased police vigilance on the land border. Last month, the bodies of a Turkish family — a mom, dad and three young children — washed up on the island of Lesbos. The father, Huseyin Maden, a 40-year-old physics teacher, had lost his job because of suspected ties to Gulen.

Despite the risks, Spathis says there is still a “steady flow” of Turks fleeing to Greece. Earlier this month, a boat carrying 32 teachers and civil servants fleeing the purge in Turkey arrived on the Aegean Island of Chios.

Ali, the Rumi scholar, says Greece almost feels like home. He likes walking around Thessaloniki, with its winding streets and the burnt-caramel scent of the milk pudding kazandibi wafting from local patisseries.

“I feel like I’m in a street of Istanbul or Ankara,” he says. “I’m comfortable here. Thanks to the people.”

 

Source: NPR , December 27, 2017


Related News

What a shame, what a pity

The education bill is just a message to a specific audience. It turned out to be the first step in the destruction of the Hizmet movement [inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen]. The new bill [on dershanes] is not limited to prep schools. It aims to almost “reestablish” the Ministry of Education [by reassigning thousands of officials].

Education [for Kurds] in mother tongue

The Wise People Commission has prepared a report on its two months of work and submitted it to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. What does Turkey — east and west — think about the settlement? What are the basic expectations and demands? How will concerns that the country could be partitioned be eliminated? Will Turkey […]

The Remarkable Scale of Turkey’s “Global Purge”

The global purge further erodes hopes that the end of the Cold War and expansion of the liberal order would result in democratic consolidation. The global purge is a threat not just to the Turkish diaspora but to the rule of law everywhere.

They busted the house of a deceased teacher to take her under custody

Parents of Didem took a grief-stricken breath when they saw the police squad holding custody document which is written Didem’s name on it and they said “If you want to take her under custody you should go to cemetery. Didem is dead, my son.”

CHP applies to Constitutional Court for annulment of dershane law

Speaking to reporters during a press conference at Parliament on Friday, CHP deputy parliamentary group chairman Akif Hamzaçebi said his party has taken the dershane law, under which all dershanes across the country are to be closed down and about 40,000 school administrators reassigned, to the Constitutional Court.

Astonishing questions about the failed coup attempt in Turkey

Many people watching the stunning events in Turkey believe that the coup attempt was nothing but a pure ‘theater.’ The leader of the coup was a pro-Erdogan General Mehmet Disli, brother of AKP deputy Saban Disli, who defines himself as Erdogan’s confidante. The poorly-planned coup attempt has started with the capture of Istanbul’s Bosporus Bridge. […]

Latest News

Fethullah Gülen’s Condolence Message for South African Human Rights Defender Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Hizmet Movement Declares Core Values with Unified Voice

Ankara systematically tortures supporters of Gülen movement, Kurds, Turkey Tribunal rapporteurs say

Erdogan possessed by Pharaoh, Herod, Hitler spirits?

Devious Use of International Organizations to Persecute Dissidents Abroad: The Erdogan Case

A “Controlled Coup”: Erdogan’s Contribution to the Autocrats’ Playbook

Why is Turkey’s Erdogan persecuting the Gulen movement?

Purge-victim man sent back to prison over Gulen links despite stage 4 cancer diagnosis

University refuses admission to woman jailed over Gülen links

In Case You Missed It

Class-B shareholders join objection against Asya decision

Amir Hussain on Fethullah Gulen and Hizmet Movement

US intel director: Turkish purge impeding fight against ‘Islamic State’

Pro-government paper claims with photoshopped image that Gülen has Vatican passport

Turkish Civil society groups: Lack of hate crimes legislation hurts citizens

EU expresses concern over declaration of Gülen movement as terrorist without due process

Was there a sincere alliance between the Gulen Movement and Erdogan?

Copyright 2024 Hizmet News