A source with insight into the Greek administration and security services tells NewsVoice that Erdogan’s Turkey is behind a massive and organized trafficking operation that is a key economic driver behind much of the huge refugee flows into Europe.
According to the information, Turkish operators arrange sponsored trips from a number of countries in the Far East and Middle and North Africa. Whole planes are chartered to transport migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Nigeria, Libya and other countries. The migrants can buy plane seats for only €50 through Turkish sponsorship. They are flown to Turkey, where they are then charged, according to a pre-departure agreement, between €2000 and €3000 per person.
It is an economic calculation where the sponsorship cost of the seats is paid for by a much higher trafficking fee (up to €3,000). One source says it’s just a matter of doing the math. Multiply the trafficking fee per person by the total number of refugees over the last 10 years. We are talking about 100,000s of individuals or more.
The migrants are often transported at night, after being picked up in Turkey, by rubber dinghies from Turkey to several Greek islands where they are rudely dumped. Samos had at most, at any one time, 10,000 migrants housed in a large tent camp (Vathy camp) right next to the island’s capital Samos Town.
The Greek authorities have chosen to try to take care of the refugees in the best way possible for a period of time, as it has become clear that Turkey is murdering refugees who have been sent back, says a Samos resident.
As the situation has become untenable for the islands’ populations, the current strategy is to stop the boats transporting refugees from Turkey to Greece, despite the risks to the refugees. This has been done with the help of coastguards, helicopters with night vision cameras and aircraft. The tough measures have been successful, and in 2020, almost no refugees have been able to land on Samos, but at the same time, Greece is accused of excessive force against the migrants.
These restrictive measures may explain why many migrants have recently been transported by land to Greece from Turkey instead of by sea.
NewsVoice has previously reported on an almost empty plane from Amsterdam to Athens due to the coronavirus crisis. That tourism is damaged by the corona crisis is a fact. What further plagues Greece is the refugee invasion, which is said to be arranged by Turkey. In addition, there are the new heightened military tensions between Greece and Turkey, which scare tourists away from the islands near Turkey. The issue is a dispute over gas and oil deposits near Cyprus.
Today, political analysts fear that if things escalate, an armed war could break out between the two countries. Moreover, there is already a long and protracted war between Greece and Turkey, and the last decades have been characterized by ceasefires rather than peace, according to one person.
This is not helped by the fact that the strait between Samos and the Turkish mainland is only 1.6 kilometers wide (the Mycale Strait). Samos is so ridiculously close to Turkey that it seems obvious that the Turkish administration may consider that the island should not belong to Greece.
There is a local mountain restaurant in a deep gorge facing Turkey where an elderly restaurant owner tells the story of how the Greeks stopped a Turkish landing during the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922. The conflict between Turkey and Greece is very long, and some observers believe that the Turks are now using migrants as a weapon to push Greece to the negotiating table over gas and oil.
NewsVoice interviewees claim that 99% of the indigenous Greek population of Samos agree that Erdogan is a plague, but not everyone agrees on how to solve mass migration.
Some want tough measures against migrants, while others want a softer solution. The Greeks have a huge dilemma if it is true that Turkey is using people as a weapon against Greece. If all refugees are accepted, the economy of the islands is crushed or damaged,d and if refugees are rejected, they risk dying in harsh conditions or being murdered in Turkey. After all, a returning migrant from Greece to Turkey has already spent almost all of his money to get to Greece. The person is penniless and therefore economically useless to the Turkish people smugglers.
NewsVoice: Samos’ new refugee camp looks like a concentration camp
The Greek administration on Samos, for example, has shown through actions that the tough refugee-repelling tactics are the way to go. For Samos, this has meant that no new migrants have been able to land at all for 2-3 months. “Things are going in the right direction now,” a restaurant owner told NewsVoice.
Erdogan’s motives behind staging a mass invasion are debatable. One hypothesis that has been put forward is that Erdogan wants to restore the glory of the former Ottoman Empire by allowing Europe to be invaded by mainly Muslim migrants, individuals with a clear intention to maximize the Islamization of Europe.
NewsVoice: Canadian anti-ISIS fighter says Erdogan wants to become sultan of Islamic State
By T. Sassersson, NewsVoice | Photo: Torbjörn and F. Sassersson
Related
- RT: Erdogan and his family involved in ISIS oil trade – Russian MoD
- NewsVoice: Erdogan wants to end Assad
- Gatestone: Greece’s migrant crisis: “A powder keg ready to explode”
- Gatestone: Analysis: Sweden could be 30% Muslim by 2050 if immigration continues
- NewsVoice: Turkish MP: ISIS got chemical weapons from the West via Turkey – Assad blamed
- InfoMigrants: Greek coast guard and Frontex once again intercept dozens of migrants in Aegean Sea
