Human Rights Watch believes that Greece is violating the principle of non-refoulement not only by returning to Turkey Iraqis who may be subjected to onward return to Iraq, but also by returning any migrants to Turkey because they face a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment there. The conditions that Human Rights Watch found at the Tunca center in Edirne, in particular, show that migrants returned from Greece are systematically and consistently subjected to inhuman and degrading conditions. By returning migrants to such conditions, Greece is in breach of its obligations under the ECHR. Greece is also in direct violation of the ECHR when its own conditions of detention are inhuman and degrading. While Human Rights Watch does not regard conditions of detention for migrants in Greece as systematically inhuman and degrading, such conditions are not uncommon. The risk of such treatment is particularly real at the airport where people returned from other EU member and neighboring states under the Dublin system first arrive and in police stations in the border region where migrants from Turkey are often first apprehended and detained. The willingness of the Greek state to accede to its obligations means little if this is not evidenced through the conduct of police and other officials. Greece also fails to provide refugee protection within its own territory. Of nearly 2,000 Iraqi asylum claims decided in Greece in 2006, none were granted on Refugee Convention grounds or protected because of risk of harm from armed conflict and generalized violence in Iraq. Greece’s negative approach toward asylum seekers is not unique to Iraqis—its approval rate in the first instance for all nationalities in 2006 was 0.6 percent and in 2007 was 1.2 percent. Despite the extremely low approval rates, the number of Iraqis lodging asylum claims in Greece increased from 1,415 in 2006 to about 5,500 in 2007. In April 2008, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) leveled a sharp criticism of Greek asylum and detention policies and recommended that other European states not return asylum seekers to Greece. UNHCR said that asylum seekers in Greece “often lack the most basic entitlements, such as interpreters and legal aid, to ensure that their claims receive adequate scrutiny from the asylum authorities.” The UNHCR announcement was preceded on February 7, 2008 by Norway announcing that it was suspending all transfers of asylum seekers to Greece under the terms of the 5 Human Rights Watch November 2008