Word: turkish
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...plastic gloves and a headlamp, speaks to the men in broken English. "Where you from?" he asks. Eventually, one softly responds. "Afghanistan," he says, and the others repeat the word. None have identity documents. It's past 1 a.m., and the coast-guard captain estimates the raft left the Turkish coast four hours earlier. The men have rowed more than halfway across the strait, a few hundred yards into Greek territorial waters. They've made it into Europe alive. Five minutes later, the radar picks up another dinghy nearby with five more young men, and the drill is repeated...
...Europe is not, as with Russia, how to avoid a dangerous rivalry. It is, rather, how to institutionalize relations with Turkey so that it can be Europe's partner in a dangerous neighborhood. At a recent World Economic Forum conference in Istanbul, I was struck both by how creative Turkish diplomacy now is in the whole ring of instability to its east and south, from Armenia right round to Syria, and how much Turks wanted to work with Europeans to extend the area of peace and economic integration which has, since the Treaty of Rome 51 years ago, steadily moved...
...From the port of Mytilene, you can see the lights of the Turkish coastal town of Dikili twinkling on the horizon. Further north, where the strait between the two countries narrows to just three miles, traffickers zip immigrants across by Jet Ski. But the usual form of transport is a humble dinghy or decrepit motorboat crammed past capacity, and destined to be abandoned after the crossing - if the boat and its passengers make it. In October, in separate incidents, Greek and Turkish authorities recovered 18 bodies; the E.U. estimates that 3,000 or more people die annually attempting to slip...
...concedes that he is struggling to respond to the flood of arrivals. Karamalis says he regularly stuffs the two-story detention center to more than double its 350-person capacity, or tries - often in vain - to rent hotel rooms for detainees. "We have reports of hundreds of thousands on Turkish shores waiting to cross over," he says. "The numbers are so vast now, we fear we may lose control...
...says Ankara sees "immigration as a bargaining chip" toward membership in the European Union. Interior Minister Pavlopoulos argues that "Turkey has to respect E.U. law if it wants to be a member. As long as it acts like this it will be impossible to move forward with accession." Turkish officials, who point out that they too are struggling to cope with huge flows of immigrants, deny a lack of cooperation and say Greece is trying to unburden itself of immigrants who may have never touched Turkish soil in the first place...