VIII. Turkey's Border-Enforcement Response to Greek Expulsions and Pushbacks

Accounts of abusive treatment at the point of arrest by Turkish police and gendarmes are common.[103]  For some migrants, the act of apprehension itself is accompanied by violence.  A Moroccan man who was summarily expelled across the Evros River on May 29, 2008, in the typical fashion, at night on a wooden motor boat, told about what happened upon his arrival on the Turkish side of the river:

When we arrived on the Turkish side, everybody started to run, but I had to walk because I was with a friend whose leg was hurt.  The military saw us and told us to stop, and we did.  But one of the soldiers, he was very young; he hit me on my knee with the back of his gun and then pointed his gun at my neck.  From there they took us to the gendarmerie military base.[104]

A 24-year-old Palestinian man, also after being summarily expelled by the Greek authorities, started running after disembarking from the wooden boat on the Turkish side of the river.  "When the Turkish soldiers caught me," he said, "they started beating me with their rifle butts and shouting at me."[105]  A 28-year-old Iraqi man with extensive injuries from a bomb blast (quoted previously about detention conditions in Greece), was summarily returned twice at night by Greek authorities across the Evros River near Soufli.  He gave the following account of his treatment upon arrest at the river:

The Turkish police caught us just after the Greeks sent us across the river near Edirne.  The Turkish police are Muslim but they are not good.  They broke my nose.  I told them I was a Palestinian, which is what the smuggler told me to say.  When I told the Turkish policeman that I was Palestinian, he slapped me, but I caught his hand.  Then another policeman punched me in the nose.  My nose filled with blood.[106] 

Iraqis most commonly said that the reason Turkish gendarmes beat them in the border region upon apprehension was because they refused to believe their cited national identity.  Another Iraqi, a 31-year-old mechanical engineer from Baghdad, told Human Rights Watch that after the Greek police sent him across the Evros River on a wooden motor boat he was caught by Turkish police.  At that point, he said, "I told them I was Palestinian.  They didn't believe me.  First they started slapping me.  I insisted I was Palestinian.  So then they started beating me with a rubber hose."[107]

Testimonies about gendarmes at the border beating migrants to establish their national identity continue after arrival at the Edirne passport office.  A 37-year-old Iraqi from Diyala interviewed in Athens told Human Rights Watch about his experience at Edirne after being returned from Greece to Turkey in March 2008:

I was afraid if I told them I was Iraqi that I would be deported, so I said I was Palestinian.  They suspected that I was Iraqi and they tortured me badly.  They beat me on my legs.  I saw them beat an Iranian until he was unconscious.  They took him away on a blanket.  I thought the same would happen to me.  I kept insisting that I was a Palestinian and they continued beating me for 10 or 15 minutes.  They would beat me, ask me questions about Palestine, and then beat me some more.[108]

Similar to the beating of "Palestinians" to get them to admit to being deportable nationalities, Asians claiming to be Burmese are also subjected to beatings.  A 29-year-old Bangladeshi man in the Edirne Tunca detention facility who was so thin and jaundiced that he looked like he might not survive his ordeal told Human Rights Watch about how he and others were beaten on the sidewalk outside the Edirne Passport Office.  The gendarmes apprehended his group and took them to a police station where they were photographed and fingerprinted.  He said that the gendarmes treated them properly, although he said that everyone in the group lied about his nationality, all claiming either to be Palestinian or Burmese.  The gendarmes then took them to the passport office in Edirne:

A passport office policeman there asked us where we were from and we said Burma. Then he started hitting us.  One man's lip was bleeding.  Five or six other policemen watched as he beat us.  This happened on March 14, 2008 at 2:00 pm.  There were 22 of us at the passport office-20 "Palestinians" and two of us claiming to be Burmese.  He hit all of us.  Three other policemen did some hitting.  The people were crying, saying, "Believe us. Believe us." 

The policeman hit me about seven times.  I continued to say I was from Burma. They hit my friend from Bangladesh about 12 times.  I know the man who hit us quite well.  He comes here [the Tunca detention center at Edirne] often.  I think he is an officer.  That day he was wearing a light blue shirt and a police uniform.  He comes here many times in civilian clothes.  He has short brown hair brushed back from his forehead.  He is tall and slim with a long face, not round.  He is about 40 years old.[109] 

One interviewee, a child, alleged that Turkish officials beat him to make him admit to being an adult.  The child, a Bangladeshi youth in the Kırklareli detention facility, told Human Rights Watch about this encounter shortly after being apprehended in Turkey:  "I told them that I was 17 years old.  They beat me to tell them that I was not 17, that I was 18.  They hit me with a stick and kicked me.  They beat me for 10 minutes. When I said I was 18 they stopped beating me."[110] 

A 26-year-old man claiming to be Burmese gave a disturbing account of gendarmes compelling him and other migrants to perform forced labor:

The gendarmes are very hard-minded people.  I am very weak and the gendarmes hit me with a stick.  They made us clean the football field of the gendarmerie station.  We were about 70 people.  We also had to clear the garden, clean the toilet and the dirty water canal… They said we were all Pakistani, but I am not.  Anyone who said he was Burmese, they would hit…So I had no chance to express myself.  The gendarmerie station was one hour by bus from Edirne, near the border.  It was written "Jandarma" everywhere, but I don't know the name of the place.

We had to do this cleaning all day.  The food was very little.  Just one loaf of bread for 15 people.  On the first day, we were given bread just once.  On the second day, twice. We were also given small orange-colored fruit with dust on it. 

Forty people stayed at night in one room…  The room was very small.  It wasn't possible to sleep there.  There were no mattresses. We had to sit up.  We drank water from the tap in the bathroom toilet.

I told the gendarmes that I was very sick but I was beaten three times.  The first time, when I requested to rest when I was working in the field, they hit me with a stick and kicked me in the backside several times.  One tripped me and I lay on the ground and he hit me with a stick and kicked me with his boots.  The second time, I was digging with a shovel and paused, and the police hit me.  The third time I was hit when I put down the shovel to get a drink of water. The gendarme hit me with a black plastic baton.  He also slapped me with his open hand.  The police hit other people too.  I would say of the 70 people working in the field, 50 were hit.  Some of them cried.[111]