Greece has been found guilty of sending back a Turkish migrant through a so-called pushback, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled on Tuesday. Greece must pay the Turkish woman 20,000 euros in compensation. Another case about a pushback, brought by an Afghan man, has been declared inadmissible due to a lack of evidence, the court ruled.
The Turkish woman, who initiated the case against Greece herself, crossed the border river between Turkey and Greece as a political refugee in 2019. Upon her arrival, she was sent back to Turkey on an inflatable boat along with others. There, the woman, who according to Turkey is a supporter of the Gülen movement, was arrested and imprisoned.
In the case of the Afghan man, there was no evidence to prove a pushback. The man was said to have been sent back into the Aegean Sea in a rubber boat in 2020, when he was fifteen years old, after arriving on the Greek island of Samos.
Greece is regularly criticized for illegal pushbacks of migrants. Last year the BBC revealed in a documentary that at least 43 people died between 2020 and 2023 due to such forced return journeys by the Greek coast guard. In the documentary, titled Dead Calm: Killing in the Med? a former employee of the Greek coast guard speaks. He called the coast guard’s practices “blatantly illegal” and “an international crime.”