Turkish sources have reported the deaths of a total of at least thirty-five people as a result of two separate incidents in the Aegean Sea.
According to the Turkish coastguard, twenty-four refugees were drowned when their boat sank off the coast of Lesbos, a Greek island. In addition, the news organisation Dôgan has reported an additional eleven people died further south, near the resort of Dikili, in Turkey’s Izmir province. Dogan claimed that a number of children were on the Lesbos boat, and the Hurriyet newspaper reported that a number of people had been rescued, but details are currently sketchy.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is currently visiting Turkey, and the refugee crisis was high on her agenda when she met the country’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. Berlin sees Ankara as crucial if the refugee problem is to be brought under control. Turkey has claimed it lacks the capacity to admit the 35,000 refugees believed to have massed on the other side of its border with Syria, but he EU is pushing hard for it to open its doors.
As of last Friday, 374 refugees have died trying to cross to Europe since the start of 2016, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Entering Greece by sea from Turkey was the most used route into the EU in 2015.