There has never been a better time to be in the people-smuggling business in Turkey. It’s a bull market — lots of demand, and now lots of supply, with 25,000 smugglers providing services to customers, according to the following Czech news report. Business is booming, and the price of a passage to Europe keeps dropping,
Many thanks to Xanthippa for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Transcript:
| 00:00 | World on the Edge | |
| 00:04 | Turkey will play a very significant role | |
| 00:08 | in the migrant crisis. Two million more migrants are still in Turkey. Mostly they come from | |
| 00:13 | Syria and Afghanistan. They want to go to Europe. The only reason | |
| 00:18 | why they have not yet done so is money. That is why one can see | |
| 00:22 | so many children and women who are begging. That is why young men are trying | |
| 00:27 | to get jobs here, at all costs. They are willing to work | |
| 00:31 | for a third of the Turkish wage. | |
| 00:35 | Where are you from? Afghanistan. And which city? Kabul. And you want to go to Europe? | |
| 00:40 | Of course. And why are you still in Istanbul? We have to earn the money for the journey. | |
| 00:44 | Then we will go to Europe. | |
| 00:48 | How long? How long until you can afford it? | |
| 00:52 | Till you will have enough money to go to Europe? | |
| 00:56 | How long you will work? One year. In Turkey, there are 25,000 | |
| 01:00 | people smugglers, against whom till now nobody has taken any action. | |
| 01:04 | This is a huge problem. That is why they can send more and more boats | |
| 01:09 | into Greece, into Europe. It is also not difficult | |
| 01:13 | to find the webpage with contact information, including phone numbers, | |
| 01:18 | for people smugglers who are offering for €1,200 | |
| 01:22 | to take customers to Europe, and for €6,000 to be brought directly into Germany. | |
| 01:26 | These are people against whom neither the local police nor the government take any action. | |
| 01:30 |
Besides Turkey taking no action against the 25,000 human smugglers, which shows Turkey condones them, you have Greece which is sending ferries to take them off its islands to the mainland.
Greece should be shipping them back to Turkey or leaving them on the islands. That would halt the flow.
There would be a humanitarian disaster if they kept piling up on the islands, but if they still keep coming, despite knowing this, it is their fault and they should suffer the consequences.
Deals could be made only for them to be taken back to Turkey or their home country by ship or plane.