JOURNAL OF ETHNIC AND MIGRATION STUDIES
3
Downloaded by [94.66.124.78] at 01:32 30 November 2017
Greece in fortress Europe
The external frontier of the EU between Turkey and Greece is made up of a 203 km land
border in the Evros region in the North and a sea border on the Aegean in the South.
Characterised by multiple, alternative points of crossing, as well as by sustained flows
of people who have resisted the intensification of border control policies, the Greek–
Turkish border has, since 2009, been dramatically affected by the regional tumult
caused by forced displaced people trying to find safety or a better life in Europe. In
2015, for instance, for which we have the most complete statistics, it was estimated that
more than 850,000 people crossed from Turkey into Greece by land and sea. Sea arrivals,
specifically, increased that year by an astonishing 1075.3%, earning the label from the
UNHCR of a ‘maritime refugee crisis’. More than 85% of those arriving in Greece were
from countries experiencing war and conflict, principally Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and
Somalia. Women and children accounted for more than 60%.
In late January 2016, the EU gave Greece a three-month ultimatum to prevent arrivals
from Turkey. Failure, it warned, would vacate Greece's membership of the borderless
Schengen area. Austria and several Balkan countries began building rows of fences and
FYROM (Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), in March 2016, sealed its southern
border with Greece. In response, Greece expanded its detention and reception capacity.
At the time of writing, there are more than 50 emergency reception sites and 5 hotspots,
as well as a number of informal sites,3 operating with capacity for around 60,000 people. In
addition to these new facilities, Greece continues to use a number of pre-removal detention centres, older dedicated detention sites, and numerous border guard and police
stations.
Detention has been a core aspect of border policing in the country for a number of
years, as subsequent governments have sought to make Greece an unfriendly destination
for migrants and secure its borders.4 The emergent policies, enacted under conditions of
severe economic privation, seek to deter migrants through fencing and gatekeeping (Triandafyllidou and Ambrosini 2011), and by making detention facilities unlivable. The government also operates a formal deportation system.
The investment in safeguarding Greece's porous borders was completed by the 2012 erection of a 10.5 km fence along the most transited part of its land border with Turkey. That
same year saw the deployment of 2000 additional border guards along the Evros river under
temporary Operation Aspida, making the Greek-Turkish border the ‘centre of gravity’ of
Frontex's operations.5 These measures proved effective in discouraging immigrants or
smugglers from this particular route. They did not stem the flow of arrivals however.
Instead, migrants were forced on far more dangerous sea-crossings to the Greek islands,
with a resultantly increased death toll in the Aegean (Pallister-Wilkins 2015).
Resourceful Hellenic police and coastguard have employed, over the years, a number of
other, more informal techniques to control the borders with Turkey, creating a chain of
transnational exploitation. Though it is not easy to document these cases and the scale
with which they occur, testimonies collected by human rights organisations and NGOs
concerning illegal deportations and push-backs suggest that these practices have been
routine, systematic, brutal and, above all, long-standing (HRW 2008;; ProAsyl 2007). In
2013, for example, Amnesty International (2013) reported that coastguard officials were
puncturing inflatable boats or otherwise disabling them before setting them adrift