IZMIR, Turkey — Basmane Square, located opposite the central railway station here, is the unofficial capital for migrants and those who profit from their plight. So far this year half a million people have entered Greece through Turkey. On their way to the south Aegean islands, most of them had to stop in Izmir, the country’s third largest city.
Every evening, by 10 p.m. or so, the square turns into a bazaar of modern human movement. Thousands of refugees, who reach Izmir by bus, minivan and taxi, spend most of the night in anxious anticipation. Many have escaped the ravages of war; this is the beginning of another arduous journey to Europe via “the Balkan route.”
They come mostly from Syria, though many of them are Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis or Kurds. The smugglers walk freely among them — grinning in the spirit of ancient Oriental traders. They’re looking for new arrivals.
Most of the refugees I talked to had first contacted smugglers back in Syria. In the last few months the smugglers’ networks have rapidly expanded: Some 30,000 people are now involved, according to Europol. The networks’ tentacles reach into every major Syrian city.
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Those who want to leave Syria start to make their plans in their home towns. It is the local traffickers who, through a system of bribes, ensure refugees get cleared through all Syrian checkpoints on the way to Turkey. Ideology doesn’t mean much: Business is business, whether you are a member of the Islamic State or not.
Ideology doesn’t mean much: Business is business, whether you are a member of the Islamic State or not.
“Once you cross the [Turkish] border, you have some options,” said Nazir, a 26-year-old from Latakia, a Syrian city on the Mediterranean coast. “The money to reach Greece through Turkey can be handed over in Istanbul or Izmir…. Sometimes in other places too. Here in Izmir, the three of us simply made our way to the special office called ‘the insurance company.’ Each of us had to pay $1,200 to buy safe passage to Greece. The price was fixed in advance, there was no negotiation. We then obtained our ‘codes’ (or ‘passwords’), testifying to our having paid the sum. We’re waiting for our smuggler to call and inform us when we set off. He promised we would leave today, but we have been waiting here since early morning. I hope everything goes according to plan. I talked to so many people who had been tricked by the smugglers.”
A reserved young man, Nazir spent six years studying medicine in Russia and spoke some English as well as Russian. He had always felt it was his calling to save lives, he told me, and on getting his degree he returned home to Syria. But because of his anti-government position, he was soon forced to flee. His family helped raise the $3,000 he would need to reach Germany.
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Once a refugee deposits the required sum with a so-called insurance company, he’s usually issued a piece of paper with a number to identify himself to the particular smuggler assigned to him. The smuggler’s next move is to call his superiors and receive his payment.
The smugglers on the bottom of the food chain are usually refugees themselves. Most hail from Syria and Pakistan. Some are paying off their debt to the smugglers above them. Some are simply trying to get by or save up enough money to get to Europe themselves. Some are born salesmen. There are even a few who say their goal is to help their fellow countrymen.
Whatever the case, it is good business.
In September alone, more than 153,000 refugees reached Greece through Turkey — on average, 5,000 people crossed the Aegean Sea daily.
A boy is carried ashore moments after his arrival with other Syrian and Iraqi migrants on Lesbos last week | Getty
Since the smugglers cram up to 60 people onto small rubber boats designed to carry maybe a dozen, this means up to a hundred boats make the trip each day. At a rate of $1,200 per adult and $600 per child, the smugglers rake in as much as $72,000 dollars per boat — up to $6 million in untaxed revenues per day.
Bus and taxi drivers, mobile operators, merchants and hoteliers are also turning a high profit. The hotels and hostels around Basmane Square are so overbooked that refugees sleep in the hallways. The sale of used boats — and their mostly Chinese-made motors — is booming.
The sea will only remain relatively calm for two or three more weeks at most.
In its yearly report, Frontex, the EU’s external border agency, described the Turkish smuggling industry as a “multi-million-euro business” that is “likely to be replicated in other departure countries.”
Despite the onset of autumn and unfavorable weather conditions, the business is still operating at peak capacity. The sea will only remain relatively calm for two or three more weeks at most. Then the industry will grind to a halt, and thousands of people will be stranded in Turkish coastal towns.
Many of them are stranded already. In the town of Izmir, some 70,000 people have officially registered as refugees. The town’s governor Mustafa Toprak recently said authorities don’t know what can be done about the masses gathering on the coast. A large majority of them will very likely not be able to afford to continue on to the European Union.
The smuggler’s testimonial
“I don’t think of myself as a criminal. I’m not doing anything to hurt anybody. I’m helping out my own people and earning some money doing it.”
The man we shall call Abu Ahmad smiled.
a Syrian family arrives in a small boat as the sun rises on the island of Kos.
I talked to him in one of the oppressively narrow streets behind Basmane Square, and learned that he joined the chain of smugglers this spring. In Syria, he had worked in an automobile repair workshop. When the rebellion against the Assad regime broke out in 2011, he joined the opposition Free Syrian Army and later escaped to Turkey. For a while he lived in Istanbul, working a series of odd jobs.
It was at the end April that he made his first serious attempt to get to Europe. He paid the smugglers the required fee to get to Lesbos. His boat gave out and sunk to the bottom of the ocean — luckily, close enough to the Turkish coastline that everyone on board managed to swim to safety. No one got their money back. The smugglers — many of them armed — threatened to shoot them dead.
That kind of thing isn’t unusual. In the last few months I talked to many refugees who’d shared Abu Ahmad’s fate, or worse.
Abu Ahmad returned to Izmir and found lodgings in a flat he shared with 15 other refugees. An acquaintance put him in touch with one of the smugglers’ collectives. His newfound employers promised they would “help him out.”
Now Abu Ahmad had a job: recruiting new arrivals who flock to Basmane Square. He became a major smuggler’s agent. He refused to tell me how much he was paid for each refugee he landed, but he did let on that the last three months were profitable enough for him to be able to move into a cheap hotel.
“I never cheated anyone. I don’t want [my fellow refugees] to experience what happened to me.”
“Every day, I’m out in the streets. People are coming here without any sound information. My job is to tell them what they need to know. I never took advantage of any of my fellow refugees. I never cheated anyone. I don’t want them to experience what happened to me.”
While walking across “Little Syria,” Abu Ahmad told me that most of the smugglers are “real crooks.”
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The restaurants near the railway station were full. In front of hotels, large groups of refugees were patiently waiting for the fateful call. The shops were open. The anxiety-ridden night streets saw the arrival of an occasional police patrol, yet the smugglers seemed unfazed. Even the local tourist agencies didn’t try to hide their involvement in the smuggling business.
“The policemen in Izmir usually don’t give us any trouble. When they do bother, they mostly crack down on the little fish and leave the bosses alone. The Turkish state feels it’s in its best interests to see as many of the refugees leave as quickly as possible. There is no reason for the police to make trouble. Things are pretty quiet. A few times, the police demanded to see my papers, but I’ve never been arrested. A few of my acquaintances have spent some time in jail, but all of them have been released. Our business is rather safe and easy. Things have changed a little after the death of little Alan Kurdi [the small Syrian boy found dead on the beach in Turkey last month after his boat sank]. Many people have been arrested. This is part of the reason why more people now go to Lesbos instead of Kos.”
‘The Syrians are more picky’
Among the smugglers interviewed, Abu Ahmad was the only one who was willing to share his story in detail. On the streets of Izmir and Bodrum, the smugglers are quite happy to boast of their entrepreneurial prowess, but only strictly off the record.
They’re usually the ones to initiate the conversation, often mistaking average passers-by for potential customers. I was accosted by at least a dozen different smugglers over the course of the week. They didn’t seem embarrassed when they realized they had picked the wrong guy.
You can find any number of these self-styled entrepreneurs around Basmane Square or in the nearby bistros, which have been turned into makeshift offices.
For many refugees, the journey to Europe begins on the streets of Izmir, Turkey | Alice Martins/TNS via ZUMA Wire
“This year, I helped more than a hundred people cross over to Greece,” a 40-year-old Pakistani told me in Izmir. “My assignment is to approach and round up the ones who want to go to Lesbos. There are several of us charged with this responsibility. We have our own boats, all of them of good quality. Our aim is to get as much use of them as possible. We also provide life jackets for our customers, and transportation to the boarding points.”
Without papers or any other sort of formal identification, the Pakistani smuggler had come to Turkey about a year ago and quickly made his mark within the smugglers’ fraternity. He is now mostly in charge of the Afghan and Pakistani refugees. Since he has proven to be trustworthy, his contact details get passed along to many Syrians, who are, he told me, generally known to be more picky when it comes to smugglers. “The Syrians have more money, so they can afford to choose. ”
The focus of the operation will shift to the land border between Turkey and Greece in the winter months.
Like most of his associates, the unnamed Pakistani normally spends his entire day in the streets, moving in a half-mile radius around Izmir’s central railway station. His greatest worry is that the entire business will grind to a halt in the winter.
The focus of the operation will shift to the land border between Turkey and Greece in the winter months, one of the smugglers informed me. With the help of a hefty-enough bribe, he said, it’s already possible to cross the border, or reach one of the Greek islands on board a tourist boat.
The source — a Syrian smuggler who told me he started out in the business three years ago — also claimed smugglers were selling fake passports, but Greek sources deny any knowledge of refugees using fake documents to reach Kos or Lesbos on regular tourist boats.
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On Basmane Square, midnight was approaching. It’s around that time Izmir’s Syrian loiterers are ordered to get up and make their way to boarding points for the next, and especially dangerous, leg of their journey. From the beaches and secluded coves north of Izmir, most of them set off for the island of Lesbos.
Some of them prefer to head to Bodrum, a high-end tourist town down the coast from Izmir. From there, less than 10 kilometers separate them from Kos. Yet Lesbos remains the most popular choice, despite the rougher seas and living conditions that have deteriorated more rapidly there than on any other Greek island.
Life vests — seen later abandoned, below, on the shores of Lesbos — of questionable quality are for sale | ANGELOS TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty
The Turkish smugglers who focus on the crossing to Lesbos are reputed to be the most seasoned and competent. A number of smugglers assured me that Turkish coastal guard presence there is lax.
Taxis and minibuses quickly filled up, as Turkish policemen looked on. The men smoked nervously, perfecting their travel plans and checking on their luggage one last time. Sitting on the cold pavement, women fed their children and tried to put the babies to sleep.
There were even special pink life jackets for little girls.
Men selling life jackets made their way through the crowd. “Yamaha, original, 45 Turkish liras!” one of them shouted, showing off the orange-colored jackets that can also be bought in many shops in the area. The jackets came in various shapes. There were even special pink life jackets for little girls.
‘Waterproof! 100 percent!’
Some sellers offered diving fins and inflatable arm rings. The inner, inflatable part of a car tire is also easy to procure.
The demand for life jackets is so great that shops had ran out of stock. Unreliable and often dangerous imitations have been manufactured speedily here in Turkey, according to my sources.
A Syrian man holds his baby as he walks past a pile of life jackets after arriving on Lesbos | ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty
“Is this an original jacket?” I asked a peddler.
He gave me a perfectly innocent gape. “Of course!” he smiled. “Waterproof! 100 percent!”
I bought the jacket and spent the better part of next morning getting it thoroughly soaked in my hotel bathroom. It turned so heavy it could have dragged down an elephant. As I ripped it open, I saw it was filled with wadding material. It was a fake.
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From Izmir, I took one of the regular bus lines to Bodrum. I shared the ride with 15 men from Afghanistan and Pakistan who didn’t have enough money to go to the Greek islands. They decided they would spend the winter in Bodrum, where they would try to find work.
Smugglers had told them they might be given a hefty discount for a trip to Kos in the following days. Those deals often end in disaster.
These men are an easy target for every imaginable kind of street thug. They know Europe doesn’t want them. They’re unable to get work in Turkey. For many, the only option becomes joining one of the smuggler rings.
Later that night I saw two smugglers approach the men I met on the bus. They deftly wove their way toward the new arrivals through the throngs of European tourists, whose charge for the short boat ride to Kos would be €15.
For this same trip across the Aegean Sea, refugees pay almost 100 times more. This year, some 300 of them paid with their lives.
Boštjan Videmšek is a foreign correspondent at the Slovenian daily DELO and author of “21st Century Conflicts: Remnants of War(s).”
