Nine international media outlets accuse the EU of funding mass deportations from Turkey to Syria and Afghanistan

Brussels – A new journalistic investigation journalism exposes the complicity – or at least negligence, if you want to be in good faith – of the European Union in the systematic deportations of hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Syrian refugees from Turkey to their countries of origin. Nine international news outlets, coordinated by the investigative platform Lighthouse Reports, have heard witnesses and collected visual evidence and documents in Turkey and Brussels, revealing not only that the detention and deportation infrastructure is being foraged with EU money but that European institutions “are aware that they are funding this system but choose to turn a blind eye.”

Journalists from El País, Der Spiegel, Politico, Etilaat Roz, SIRAJ, NRC, Le Monde, and Italy’s L’Espresso followed the enormous flow of resources – over 10 billion euros, from 2015 to the present – that the EU has allocated to make Turkey a buffer zone to prevent millions of refugees fleeing Taliban persecution and civil war in Syria from reaching Europe. They uncovered 30 EU-built and funded deportation centers used by Turkish security forces to imprison and forcibly deport hundreds of thousands of people. To support its claims, the investigation flanked images of EU-funded equipment used by Ankara police to conduct mass arrests in Turkish cities and deportations to Syria, including a bus with a 12-star flag printed on the side. 

Funds used to expand fingerprinting systems are now being used to “track and pick up migrants on the street” or to equip deportation centers “with barbed wire and higher walls.” Detainees are “often denied” legal assistance and crammed into overcrowded centers with poor sanitary conditions. They are subjected to “abuse and even torture.” According to the testimonies of 37 people detained in 22 different EU-funded deportation centers, many are violently coerced into signing documents stating they wish to return voluntarily to the countries from which they fled.

The investigation also revealed testimonies from EU officials in Turkey and former staff of deportation centers, supported by official reports and documents from Ankara and Brussels. For 20 times, Lighthouse Reports said, requests to EU agencies for freedom of information to access certain documents “have been denied on the grounds that they could harm relations with Turkey.” After speaking with several European diplomats and officials in Brussels and Turkey, there is no longer any doubt: “The EU is aware that it is funding this abusive system, and its own staff has raised the alarm internally, yet senior officials choose to turn a blind eye.” 

An attitude that, according to what Lighthouse Reports — and also The Guardian and the European Court of Auditors —   revealed last spring, the top brass of the European institutions are adopting toward human rights violations in Tunisia and Libya. The allegation is disturbing: seven European diplomats in Turkey, working for the EU or its member states, allegedly claimed to have knowledge of forced deportations of Syrians and the terrible conditions inside the centers, while according to a former EU official, these issues are allegedly “systematically deleted” from the EU’s annual reports on Turkey.