VIII. Turkey’s Border-Enforcement Response to Greek Expulsions and Pushbacks Accounts of abusive treatment at the point of arrest by Turkish police and gendarmes are common.103 For some migrants, the act of apprehension itself is accompanied by violence. A Moroccan man who was summarily expelled across the Evros River on May 29, 2008, in the typical fashion, at night on a wooden motor boat, told about what happened upon his arrival on the Turkish side of the river: When we arrived on the Turkish side, everybody started to run, but I had to walk because I was with a friend whose leg was hurt. The military saw us and told us to stop, and we did. But one of the soldiers, he was very young; he hit me on my knee with the back of his gun and then pointed his gun at my neck. From there they took us to the gendarmerie military base.104 A 24-year-old Palestinian man, also after being summarily expelled by the Greek authorities, started running after disembarking from the wooden boat on the Turkish side of the river. “When the Turkish soldiers caught me,” he said, “they started beating me with their rifle butts and shouting at me.”105 A 28-year-old Iraqi man with extensive injuries from a bomb blast (quoted previously about detention conditions in Greece), was summarily returned twice at night by Greek authorities across the Evros River near Soufli. He gave the following account of his treatment upon arrest at the river: The Turkish police caught us just after the Greeks sent us across the river near Edirne. The Turkish police are Muslim but they are not good. They broke my nose. I told them I was a Palestinian, which is what the smuggler told me to say. When I told the Turkish policeman that I was 103 The gendarmerie is Turkey’s rural law enforcement force which has a double reporting structure to both the Ministry of Interior and to the Office of the General Chief of Staff. Similar accounts about the Turkish gendarmerie include B-9; B-13; B-15; B-74; B-93; B-100; B-109; and O-171. 104 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, O-168), Edirne, June 13, 2008. 105 Human Rights Watch interview (name withheld, O-171), Edirne, June 13, 2008. Stuck in a Revolving Door 48