Number of migrants and refugees reaching Europe falls in November

The refugees were put into buses and taken to a small, overcrowded detention center for foreigners awaiting deportation, the private Dogan news agency said.

“Ever since September, we have seen the Turkish authorities detaining scores of refugees, often completely incommunicado, and forcibly returning them to neighboring Syria and Iraq”.

“The reason for the decline in the number of arrivals has to do with changing climatic conditions in the Aegean, and because Turkish authorities are cracking down on human smugglers”, said a spokesman for the UNHCR. “This is as illegal as it is unconscionable”, said Andrew Gardner, Amnesty’s Turkey researcher.

The EU has also pledged some 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) over the next year or two to improve the lives of the estimated 2.3 million Syrians now living in Turkey, so that they are less likely to board boats for nearby Greek islands and potentially proceeding on to Europe.

The boat, which was carrying around 35 people, had been heading for the Greek island of Chios when it sank off the coast of Cesme, Izmir province.

On Sunday, EU promised to provide immediate and continuous humanitarian assistance in Turkey, to help the national authorities accommodate all the people who seek an ordinary life, after being forced to leave their war-torn countries. “It doesn’t have a functioning asylum process”.

The Turkish Coast Guard pulled the refugees from the water along with other refugees in the remaining three boats.

So far, 886,662 migrants seeking safety have reached European shores this year, about four times the total of 2014 and mostly through Turkey, according to United Nations data.

Another concern is that Turkey will try to restrict the flow of people entering the country, since it is unable to let out the millions it has already in the country.

He adds that most Syrians, Iraqis and others who have succeed in reaching the European Union “are unlikely to be returned to Turkey – even with the new readmission agreement in place”.

The EU is also discussing plans for resettling hundreds of thousands of refugees from Turkey in the future.