Greece accused Turkey of forcing the group over the border
This is the shocking image that allegedly shows Turkey forcing nearly 100 naked and bruised people out of the country and into Greece.
Ankara fiercely denies the ‘fake news’ claims that it made 92 migrants cross the Evros river over the Greek border, amid an ongoing migration row between the countries.
But the EU border agency Frontex confirmed that the group had arrived on Friday, in circumstances which the Greek authorities claimed presented an ‘inhuman image.’
Spokeswoman Paulina Bakula said: ‘The Frontex officers reported that the migrants were found almost naked and some of them with visible injuries.’
The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, tweeted that it was ‘deeply distressed by the shocking reports and images of 92 people, who were reported to have been found at the Greek-Turkish land border, stripped of their clothes’.
Ms Bakula added that her organisation had informed the UN agency’s fundamental rights officer of a potential rights violation.
Pictures show a group of men naked and attempting to preserve their dignity by covering their private parts on grassland.
Migrants by tents in a camp set up near the Turkish-Greek border in Pazarkule in 2020 (Picture: AP)
The image is likely to cause outrage from across the political spectrum, and underline the migration crisis facing Europe – though perhaps not on the scale that the picture of drowned refugee Alan Kurdi, two, did in 2015.
The group are said to mainly be from war-torn Syria and crisis-riven Afghanistan and are thought to have crossed the river using plastic boats.
Greece’s civil protection minister Takis Theodorikakos accused Turkey of ‘instrumentalising illegal immigration’ in the latest of a series of recriminations on migration between the neighbours.
He told Skai television that ‘three Turkish army vehicles had transferred them’ to the river, which acts as a natural border.
Ms Bakula added that Frontex officers worked with Greek officials to provide immediate assistance to the group.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in a long-standing spat with the Greek authorities about migration (Picture: Getty)
But in a series of inflammatory tweets the Turkish presidency denied any responsibility and blamed Greece for the ‘inhuman’ situation.
Conservative President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s top press aide, Fahrettin Altun, wrote: ‘We urge Greece to abandon its harsh treatment of refugees as soon as possible, to cease its baseless and false charges against Turkey.’
In tweets delivered in Turkish, Greek and English, he added: ‘With these futile and ridiculous efforts, Greece has shown once again to the entire world that it does not respect the dignity of refugees by posting these oppressed people’s pictures it has deported after extorting their personal possessions’.
He said Greek migration minister Notis Mitarachi was ‘sharing false information’ after the official tweeted a photo of the naked migrants and blamed Turkey.
The Turkish deputy interior minister Ismail Catakli called on Greece to stop what he branded its ‘manipulations and dishonesty.’
Protesters cover Aston Martin showroom in orange paint
Greek minister for migration and asylum, Notis Mitarachi, had previously described the incident as a ‘shame on civilisation.’
Athens regularly faces and denies accusations from NGOs and the media that it has on many occasions sought to push migrants back to Turkey illegally, sometimes using force.
Last month Erdogan used a UN address to accuse Greece of transforming the Aegean Sea into a ‘cemetery’ thanks to its ‘oppressive policies’ on immigration.
Berlin-based rights group Mare Liberum tweeted: ‘In the Evros region, systematic human rights crimes against people on the move are committed on a daily basis by Turkey as well as Greece.
‘When these crimes are publicly discussed by members of the government, it only serves to add fuel to the fire of the long conflict between Turkey and Greece, not to protect people on the move.’
Turkey hosts the largest number of refugees in the world.
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The shameful picture shows the ordeal that the mainly Syrian and Afghan group went through.