Six migrants drown after falling off boat near western Türkiye

Six asylum-seekers, including three children, were killed after falling off a rubber boat in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Türkiye’s western Aydın province, the Turkish coast guard said Wednesday.

The Turkish Coast Guard said early in the morning, it dispatched a rescue team after receiving reports that a group of irregular migrants trying to cross over to neighboring Greece from the Izmir province fell into the water near Aydın’s Kuşadası district.

The bodies of all six migrants have been retrieved, the agency said, adding that they were taken to a state hospital for identification.

A smuggler was detained in connection with the incident, the agency said.

According to the latest statistics from the agency, some 45 migrants drowned to death while the authorities detained 484 migrant smugglers in total last year.

Coast guard teams caught a total of 55,467 irregular migrants in Turkish territorial waters in 2024.

The Coast Guard recorded 2,005 irregular migration cases throughout 2024, with a spike of 245 cases in August, followed by September and November.

Türkiye has been a migration destination, especially in the past decade. It currently hosts more than 4.4 million residents of foreign origin. At least 3.1 million Syrians are under temporary protection, while another 228,290 people stay in the country under international protection.

European countries have remained attractive to migrants from African and Asian countries in the past decade, and Türkiye is a transit route for thousands of asylum-seekers looking to cross over to Greece from its western coasts.

Some migrants make dangerous journeys over land or sea with the assistance of smugglers, who often abandon them, especially during sea journeys, after receiving thousands of dollars from each migrant.

Others are stopped by Turkish security forces before crossing the border into Europe.

While the number of migrants arriving in other countries fell in 2024, the EU border protection agency Frontex reports that Greece saw an increase of almost 40% compared to 2023. It says around 37,000 people have arrived in Greece since the beginning of 2024.

However, around 30,000 of those irregular arrivals traveled by boat from the west coast of Türkiye to the Greek islands in the eastern Aegean rather than crossing the land border between the two countries.