Thousands of refugees are continuing to board boats to Europe everyday despite the worsening winter weather
At Emre’s boat shop in central Izmir, one of Turkey’s main ports, you can’t turn around without bumping into a pile of inflatable rubber boats. On this day there are 16 stacked in beige boxes, all numbered with the same inscrutable code, SK-800PLY, and all newly delivered from China. If Emre’s maths is right, all of them will be discarded on a Greek beach within a couple of days. For Emre’s shop is where you can buy boats that take refugees to Europe – and where they are still being sold at a rate of nearly a dozen a day.
“In the summer we were selling more,” Emre tells a potential Syrian customer. “But right now we’re still selling six of the cheaper boats every day, and five of the more expensive ones. How many do you want?”
European officials met with their Turkish counterparts on Sunday, in a bid to persuade Turkey to do more to stem Europe’s greatest wave of mass migration since the second world war. Despite the worsening weather, another 125,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Greece from Turkey in November – about four times as many as during the whole of 2014. And the biggest proportion probably passed through this quarter of Izmir.
Smuggling happens in plain sight here – leave Emre’s shop, turn right up Fevzi Paşa boulevard, one of Izmir’s main drags, and the signs of the smuggling economy are everywhere. “On the left are the hotels where the smugglers house their clients,” says Abu Khalil, a smuggler who wanders down the street with the Guardian. “And on the right are the insurance shops.” This is where the passengers deposit their fees, which are then released to the smugglers when word comes that they have reached the Greek coast.
Street vendors sit on the pavement, selling party balloons to refugees – not to celebrate with, but to act as watertight cases during the sea crossing. Many shops on the street now sell lifejackets, at least as a sideline. One kebab shop has a dozen for sale, including little ones for children, and there are even a couple in a shop that specialises in police uniforms. But it is the shoe and clothes shops that are really cashing in, with some now pushing lifejackets as their main product.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/29/hiding-in-plain-sight-inside-the-world-of-turkeys-people-smugglers
