Smugglers offer Turkey-to-Italy boat crossings $4,000

[Anthea]

Guardian

Turkey-based smugglers have begun to re-advertise trips between Turkey and Italy, in the first hint of a shift in migration patterns since the EU agreed a deal to deport any refugees landing in Greece.

In an advert on Facebook, smugglers claimed that the first boat to Italy would leave this weekend from the port of Mersin. They offered places for $4,000 (£2,780) per person, four times the cost of a journey from Turkey to Greece.

“The trip is on Saturday, from Mersin to Italy, on a merchant ship 110 metres long, equipped with food, water, life jackets and medicine,” the post read, accompanied by photographs of a cargo ship.

Using phrases more suited to tourist magazines and images of luxury yachts, smugglers based in Egypt and Turkey openly advertise services on social media

Reacting to the ad, some refugees raised the possibility of the scheme being a scam, since scores of would-be migrants were tricked in 2014 and 2015 by people posing as organisers of similar trips.

In response, the ad’s author claimed that passengers’ money would be held by a third party trusted by both the smugglers and passengers, meaning that the former stood to gain little if their clients failed to arrive in Italy.

Whatever the truth, the development nevertheless indicates increased demand for alternative routes to Europe now that it has become harder to leave Turkey for Greece.

Over the past year more than one million refugees have reached the EU by crossing the sea between the Greek and Turkish coasts. But this tactic has all but stopped in the past two weeks after the EU agreed a deal that in theory could mean almost all those arriving at the Greek islands eventually being deported back to Turkey. Turkey’s prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said on Thursday that the deal will go into effect as scheduled on Monday.

Contacted by the Guardian, the smuggler who posted the advert claimed it was the first time he had organised a journey to Italy in months. He refused to confirm where in Italy the boat would land.

Alarmed by this lack of detail about the voyage, some travellers worried that the trip could be bogus. “Are we back in the time of fraud?” one person commented under the smuggler’s ad.

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If revived, the Turkey-Italy trips would mark the rejuvenation of a tactic that had faded in the past 12 months.

During the winter of 2014-15, about a dozen co-opted cargo boats – known as “ghost ships” because of the crews’ tactic of abandoning them then sending them on autopilot towards ports – arrived in Italian waters from Turkey.

But the practice almost ceased in early 2015 after a crackdown by the Turkish authorities in Mersin and the emergence of the passage to Greece.