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In the year of the pandemic and the closing of borders, a quarter fewer refugees and migrants arrived in Europe than in the previous year. But while the numbers collapsed in Greece, they rose in Italy and Spain, despite the crown crisis.
The elderly sit in front of the tea house in the warm afternoon sun in the town square of Badenli. A gentle wind blows from the nearby sea through olive and lemon groves. An idyllic tranquility is found over the western Turkish village. Spring is coming.
Nowhere these days is there the hustle and bustle that reigned years ago in the small rocky bays that opened the shoreline here. The Greek island of Lesbos is only about 15 kilometers away. Six years ago, this made Badenli in western Turkey a transshipment point for smugglers who wanted to bring people across the sea to the European Union. In 2015 alone, the UN recorded a total of around 860,000 people risking their lives to get from Turkey to the Greek Aegean islands in small boats.
“Once the bodies of six or seven drowned children were pulled out of the water,” says Özer, a shop owner in Bathli. “That was bad. Meanwhile, nobody comes. And I think it’s good that they don’t come anymore.”
The pandemic began five years later.
