Our journey started in September, around 10pm. We left the smuggler’s place for Izmir. I remember we were exactly thirty two people. I wanted to know how many we were so if someone got lost or if our dinghy sank I would know how many people were missing. There were fifteen, maybe sixteen children, seven women including myself and around 10 men. The youngest child was around one year old and the oldest person was a guy of around fifty years, with a medical issue. He had an operation in the past and he was in pain.
The smuggler put all of us inside a small van and it took us two hours to get to the shore in Izmir. When we arrived the dinghy was already there and the men went to pump it. At 2 am we put the dinghy in the water. The sea was very rough. Our dinghy was moving up and down with the waves and it felt like at any moment it could break and sink. Everyone in the dinghy was throwing up. We wanted to reach Samos and in the middle of the sea, when we tried to refuel the engine, the fuel went into the boat and it made even more people throw up. I also threw up a lot and almost lost consciousness. I have asthma and was using my inhaler in the beginning but after some time I lost it.
Early in the morning, we were lost at sea and we could not see any close land. Around 7 am the wooden floor of our dinghy started to break and water came in. The dinghy was full of water and the rubber tubes of the dinghy were losing air. The wood of the floor started to splinter. I was sure we would die. Everyone started saying their last prayers. Suddenly we saw a grey Greek vessel coming towards us. It was a big boat with a Greek flag on it. There were ten to twelve men in uniform on it The uniforms were dark blue, they were wearing shorts and t- shirts. Their faces were covered by surgical masks and sunglasses. All of them wore black sports shoes.
They got close to us and and started shouting at us and pointing to Turkey. I guess they were ordering us to go back. We started shouting for help and showed the water in the dinghy. We were begging for help. The dinghy was full of water by then. They started talking to each other and they decided to rescue us. They threw us a rope and pulled our dinghy close to the vessel. They pulled us one by one onto the vessel. In the middle there was a small boat that was covered. They told us to sit around it. We were watching our boat going down with all of our stuff. I was very sick and kept throwing up, but I am sure no one could manage to get their stuff from the dinghy. I did not want to look back at the sea.
After the Coast Guard came to us and started searching us. They took all the money and phones and threw them into the sea. They were touching my body on purpose, I had a very bad feeling. They were all men, between twenty eight and thirty eight years old. Among them there was one man around forty years old that was even more aggressive than the others. He kept shouting at us and kicking and punching the men. They did not have any guns or other weapons. They searched us two or three times. They started getting close to the island, I guess Samos because that is where we wanted to go. When we were close to the island they turned back to the sea. It happened three to five times, I do not know why they were doing that. Maybe they wanted to torture us more.
Until 12 midday, we were in that vessel. They went back to the middle of the sea and waited there until another vessel with masked men arrived. It was the same size and also had a Greek flag on it. There were five or six people inside. Two or three women and two or three men, they were the same age as the others. They wore dark blue uniforms with a Greek flag on their shoulders. They carried pistols and had handcuffs. They were wearing the same boots and covering their faces with balaclavas. The two vessels got very close to each other, and we were transferred from one to the other. Women and children had to sit in front, and the men in the back. They searched us two times. Women were searching women and men were searching men. They were speaking Greek and English. While we were sitting in front of the vessel, one of the masked women came and gave each of us a piece of dry bread.
I do not know about the men, I could not see them in the back. We were on the second vessel for two or three hours. After, when we were probably close to Turkey they threw two life rafts into the sea and tied them together. They forced us to go into the life rafts using the stairs. People, including myself, were still throwing up. We were abandoned at sea for almost two hours. The sea was not as rough as the night before, but we were moving with the waves. After those two hours, the Turkish Coast Guard arrived and started taking photos of us. They were laughing at us and making fun of us.
They threw us a rope and when we wanted to catch it, they pulled it back and laughed. They repeated this many times. It took almost half an hour until they allowed us to grab the rope. They pulled us one by one on the vessel and started beating the men very badly. They put women and children inside the cabin and beat the men outside all the time. Later I recognized myself in the pictures the Turkish Coast Guard published from this incident. It took us half an hour to get to shore in Izmir. They took our fingerprints and our photos. They gave us food, clothes and blankets. But they did not let us use the bathroom. The children were crying but still they did not allow them to use the bathroom.
They kept us at the shore in the street for five days. We were sleeping on the street. After they transferred us to a very dirty camp in Izmir. More than one thousand people were there. They kept us for three days and after they took me to another building next to the camp. There I had a bed and it was a bit more clean. After they transferred me and some other people from the same building to another closed camp in Şanliurfa, close to the Syrian border. There we had to stay inside the ISO- boxes and after seven days they took me to the bus in which I was for over 24 hours. I did not know where we were going, and in the end they left me in the streets in Ankara.
Lesvos, Greece 2024
| Stories of Resistance, Lesvos 2025 Despite blanket denials from Greek authorities, “pushbacks” in the Aegean Sea and Greece’ Evros border region are a horrifying reality. For years, the Legal Centre Lesvos has collected hundreds of testimonies of survivors of border violence. Together with Fitilia, over the next year we will publish a series of these anonymized* accounts, with the intention to show that behind every statistic, there is a person risking their life to reach Europe. While these stories highlight the brutality and violence of Greek and European border policies, they are also stories of resisting border regimes. They are a call to action – a stark reminder of the urgent need to continue the fight to dismantle the borders that surround us and with it the violence of Fortress Europe. *All identifying details, including names and exact dates have been removed, however, the stories published remain true to the survivors’ own accounts, and all have consented to the publishing of their testimonies. |