FROM EXCEPTION TO EXTRA-LEGAL NORMALITY 13 summarily apprehended and pushed back over the border, the asylum process was suspended for a month, and border crossers were systematically prosecuted for illegal entry (AI 2020; 2021; HumanRights360 2020a; 2020b). Local residents— civilians and members of the National Guard, the army reserves—participated in border control “under the guidance of the Greek authorities,” exercising violence against people on the move but also journalists (Panhellenic Association of Border Guards 2020; Simeonidis 2020; Scavo 2020). Constructed as a “sudden,” “mass” “invasion” by people on the move who were depicted as an unruly, threatening “mob” “directed,” “encouraged” and “manipulated” by the Turkish government, the March 2020 movements were elevated to an “asymmetric,” “hybrid” threat to national security (Hellenic Republic 2020; European Parliament 2020). The mobilization of the securitized tropes of an urgent threat posed by the Other at the border (Tazzioli 2020; Walia 2021), reinforced through nationalist narratives of Turkey as an enemy state, enabled the government to discursively construct a border “crisis” and exceptional situation, where imminent, existential threats to security allowed for the suspension of the rule of law (Aradau et al. 2008). The violent “border spectacle” (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015; De Genova 2013) of March 2020 drew attention to a section of the EU external border which has—for the last two decades—vacillated between indifference and intense interest, for example during the first ever Rapid Border Intervention of the European Border Agency, Frontex, in October 2010 (Kasparek 2021). The discursive frames of “crisis,” exception and Turkish threats were also adopted by international and national media which flocked to Evros, the region of the Greek–Turkish border, for two weeks, and by EU actors who also visited at the time (European Commission 2020a; Ta Nea 2020; Trilling 2020). The suspension of the right to asylum and the violence of control practices witnessed at the time raised many questions about legality and the rule of law at this remote EU border but was conceptualized as an exceptional event rather than normalized practice (Markard et al. 2020; UNHCR 2020). However, the spectacular and highly mediatized nature of the events of March 2020, we argue, hid the longue durée (Demetriou 2019) of border violence in Evros and the continuity of narratives employed to justify it. Turkey, for example, has been historically perceived in Greece as an enemy state and a cultural Other but also, as Demetriou (2019: 23) notes, as “a malicious actor sending illegals to Greece.” Depictions of migratory movements as invasions and “asymmetric threats” and of migrants as Others threatening Greek cultural identity, economic wellbeing and national security have been dominant representations for over three decades (Demetriou 2019; Karamanidou 2016). While the use of tear gas and live ammunition contributed to the spectacle of March 2020, violence and violations of rights have been enduring features of the Evros border. Since the 2000s, activists, NGOS and human rights organizations have consistently and continuously Produced and distributed by Pluto Journals www.plutojournals.com/scj/