‘’Nobody knew what would happen after the deal. Nobody knew what this deal is,” two years of the EU/Turkey deal
Additional reporting: Niamh Keady-Tabbal
This article appeared as part of an interactive story: “The Unknown: Two years of the EU/Turkey Deal”
From behind a barbed wire fence on the 25th March 2016, Wassim Omar, an English teacher from the Syrian capital of Damascus appealed to the European public: ‘’Will you return us to Turkey? Or let us continue to Europe? All the people here want one thing, to get our papers and continue our journey.’’ Wearing a black football jumper, his face strained, as he spoke on behalf of hundreds of refugees who had been locked inside Vial registration camp on the Greek island of Chios for five days.
Wassim, his wife and three children arrived in Chios on the 20th March 2016, the first day of the monumental agreement between Europe and Turkey designed to end the flows of migration from Turkish shores to Greece.
‘’Nobody knew what would happen after the deal. Nobody knew what this deal is. Even after we arrived when we asked UN. We asked EASO (The European Asylum Service.) We asked organisations. We asked them about the deal, what they knew. All of them said we don’t know what this deal is. None of them had any information about this deal.’’
Prevailing conflicts across The Middle East and the Syrian civil war created a refugee crisis the worst since the second world war, as hundreds of thousands of people fled to Europe via. Turkish shores in 2015 and 2016 and continued on to other European countries.
Europe responded with a policy of containing refugees and returning them. The Balkan borders were closed and the EU/Turkey deal introduced a procedure that meant all those who reached the Greek islands should be deported to Turkey unless it was found to be ‘unsafe’ for them individually.
“They knew just that if you arrived after 20 March you have to stay in Greece and have asylum in Greece or you have to go back to Turkey. But no more.This is the words they were saying to us,’’ Wassim remembers.
He stops our phone call briefly, ‘’I have to go to a meeting.’’ He is helping with translation for an NGO and learning German. Wassim is now a recipient of international protection in Germany and his children are in school. Throughout our conversation Wassim laments the long period they and other refugee children spend without education. ‘’Now they are learning the language, though, the youngest keeps saying ‘my name is school’ instead of his name,’’ he smiles.
But for their mother and father, who both taught at a university in Damascus, this has been an arduous journey that began over a year before they arrived in Germany.
The family fled Syria on the 10th March 2016, ‘’we heard a bit about the deal but we arrived in Turkey before the fifteenth (of March) so we thought we had time.’’ Wassim calmly and effortlessly recalls the dates and timings of the entire period.
Unfortunately, his family’s first attempt to cross the sea to Greece was unsuccessful. On the second, they had a very difficult trip and were rescued in the middle of the sea after five hours. ‘’When we arrived to land we felt like we had been born again, all the people did,’’ he smiles.
But after three hours those who arrived were transferred to a closed hotspot, named Vial, in the mountains of Chios island. Those inside were not allowed to go out. “It was guarded by the police and the army. The food was not enough and at the same time you couldn’t go out. It wasn’t like a prison, it really was a prison.’’
Nearly two weeks after the deal began, a fight broke out inside Vial camp. ‘’I will be honest, not because these people are bad but because they had/have many problems and a lot of stress.”
After the sun rose the next morning, Wassim estimates about 250 people broke through the camp’s fences and walked to the port of Chios.
There, they setup a camp which he says was symbolic of their situation — as it prevented ships leaving or arriving to the island being easily accessed. “But, also, we just needed somewhere safe.’’
After a week, refugees were violently removed by the police. Video footage of the event shows Greek authorites beating and dragging refugees away from their tents and throwing canisters of teargas.
Wassim, his family and eventually over a thousand other refugees were crammed into Souda, a municipality run camp in the town centre, wedged between the ruins of old castle walls where makeshift tents outnumbered official infrastructure.
As the arrivals continued, the Vial hotspot was crowded with double in it’s intended capacity and by the summer of 2016 the island was hosting nearly 3000 refugees.
According to the deal, European countries were to resettle one Syrian refugee from Turkey for every one that was returned. Turkey has received billions of euros and was promised an acceleration of Turkish citizens visa-free travel in Europe.
In reality, many refugees became stranded on the Aegean islands. The Greek asylum system buckled under the strain, meanwhile leading human rights organisations questioned the legality of the deal itself and the deplorable living conditions it created. Very few asylum seekers have been forcibly returned under the deal and are instead confined to island camps for periods that often surpass a year.
“We were told by other people who came before us when you arrive to Chios or Greece in general you are in the first step of Europe don’t worry you’re safe everything will be okay and all people help you.” It wasn’t until three months after Wassim’s family arrived that their admissibility procedures began.
‘’We waited without doing anything and every time we asked the UN or EASO ‘When are you going to start our procedure? When will we have our papers to move tothe mainland? They said you have to wait — because there is nobody to work on your asylum. They had no rules. They didn’t know what to do. If you came after the deal, there was no system.’’
“The European people and Turkey they have this deal but they didn’t manage to expect even one person to come after. It’s like, okay, I have deal now and I have to expect after this deal that one refugee will come and what will I do with these refugees? How will Imanage these refugees? Will I send him directly to Turkey or will I give them asylum here in Greece?”
I ask Wassim how he explais what has happened to his children. He says that now they are finally living a normal life again, his eldest daughter has started to remember Syria. “She remembers everything we had - our trees, our home, our family and our life there.”
