(Photo by EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid via Flickr/CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
On April 9, 2025, the Greek government announced the implementation of a new version of the Joint Ministerial Decision (JMD) between Greece and Turkey. The JMD considers Turkey a “safe third country” for asylum seekers coming from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria, with widespread consequences for asylum seekers crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands.
The decision means that, upon arrival in Greece, asylum seekers from those five countries must prove that Turkey was unsafe for them before officials review their asylum claims, leading to increased rejection rates. Under the JMD, people from those five countries with ‘inadmissible’ claims must return to Turkey to request asylum there. The previous version of the JMD, which had been in effect since June 2021, had been annulled less than three weeks earlier after a ruling by the Greek Council of States, which considered it to be against EU law.
What is the JMD?
The JMD is a bilateral decision made by the Greek and Turkish governments to help ensure that migrants do not illegally enter the EU. It is an application of the larger, 2016 EU-Turkey Deal, which was formed at the peak of the 2015 migration crisis, when the EU’s capacity to process and house refugees was overwhelmed by the number of people fleeing the conflicts in Northern Africa and the Middle East, leading to many deaths and terrible conditions.
However, Human Rights Watch has criticized the EU-Turkey Deal – which the JMD is a part of – for outsourcing the responsibility of refugee processing to Turkey, where human rights standards cannot be guaranteed, with mass violations of international law and many cases of refoulement—the forced return of refugees to the territory they are fleeing from—as a consequence.
In addition, increased security at Greek points of arrival, such as the island of Samos, has led to asylum-seekers being detained in prison-like conditions as they await their decisions. The JMD also continues to be enforced despite Turkey not currently accepting returns, leaving those whose applications are deemed ‘inadmissible’ in legal limbo, facing homelessness and poverty with no legal solutions.
The Turkey-EU Deal and the JMD
In 2016, at the height of a displacement crisis with “the highest level of humanitarian needs since the Second World War”, the EU and Turkey brokered a deal to stem the flow of asylum-seekers reaching EU borders. This deal was particularly concerned with preventing so-called ‘irregular migration,’ in which migrants cross European borders through illegal means, such as smuggling.
Turkey agreed to ramp up border patrols—both on sea and on land—and to accept the return of refugees who cross the border by irregular means and those “not in need of international protection.” In exchange, the EU invested billions in humanitarian infrastructure in Turkey and agreed to remove visa requirements for Turkish passport holders.
However, this deal teeters on the line of international refugee law. According to Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, countries of arrival may not “impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom is threatened […], enter or are present in their territory without authorization.” This definition renders the blanket use of ‘irregular migration’ as a reason for deportations and returns legally dubious, as each case would have to be reviewed thoroughly before deciding whether there are grounds for removal.
Greece’s JMD and the Legal Grey Zone
To simplify Greece’s removal of arrivals, they implemented the JMD in 2021, which states that Turkey is safe for people from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Somalia, and Syria. No transparent reasoning was ever provided as to why these five countries were chosen for this decision. However, it is most likely no coincidence that Syria and Afghanistan, two of the most common countries of origin, were chosen, along with people from Pakistan and Bangladesh, who the Greek media and politicians often portray as opportunistic economic migrants.
The JMD annuls the protections described in Article 31 for people from these countries, because it assumes that they did not come “directly from a territory where their life or freedom is threatened.” As a result, Greece considers it Turkey’s responsibility to ascertain whether asylum seekers are refugees or not and to grant them the protections they have the right to.
However, Turkey stopped accepting returns during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and has not yet resumed admissions. As a result, people whose applications were considered ‘inadmissible’ on the grounds that they weren’t personally persecuted in Turkey live in a legal grey zone, in which they have extremely limited access to basic services and protections in Greece, but are also unable to request them in Turkey.
The Greek Council of State annulled the previous version of the JMD after the EU’s Court of Justice (CJEU) ruled the JMD illegal as long as Turkey does not accept readmissions because of the number of people left without access to social services. The new version of the JMD claims to comply with the Council of State, despite the Council of State not having published any such justification.
Is Turkey Safe for Refugees?
Turkey is a difficult place to live in as a refugee. The country hosts the highest number of refugees worldwide—four times as many as all EU member states combined. However, although the country signed both the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, policymakers never removed the geographic limitations imposed when the states signed the Convention after World War II. As a result, the Turkish government only recognizes people from Europe as refugees with full international protection.
People from non-European countries who fall under the definition of a refugee according to the 1951 Protocol have so-called ‘conditional refugee status.’ This offers them temporary protection with the ultimate goal being resettlement in another country. In addition, people migrating from Syria or Palestine fall under the ‘Temporary Protection Regime,’ meaning that they are automatically given access to very basic rights and services, but are not eligible for other protections, regardless of the circumstances of their departure.
The separate distinction for Syrians is due to the sheer number of them that have crossed the border into Turkey. Turkey currently houses roughly 3.1 million Syrian citizens, most of whom fled their country because of ongoing conflict. Once awarded Temporary Protection Status, they are allowed to stay in Turkey, but Turkish society treats them as secondary citizens with limited opportunities or rights. They are also victims of racism and discrimination, which both the government and the opposition parties enable by using anti-Syrian rhetoric to further their political agendas.
Many people think the EU is using Turkey as a dumping ground for Syrian refugees and feel burdened by the population, which they see as a drain on their economy, which is already facing growing inflation. This frustration came to a head in July 2024, when violent riots broke out in the province of Kayseri, leading to mass vandalism, seven deaths, and 474 arrests.
Escalating Deportations and Detention Conditions
Syrians are also facing mass deportations to northern Syria, often against their will. Since 2018, an Erdogan-backed repatriation campaign has decreased the number of Syrians with Temporary Protection from 3.6 million to 3.1 million. The deportations are arbitrary and violent. Often, they involve Syrians being held under deplorable conditions in detention centers at the Turkey-Syrian border before being forced to sign voluntary return paperwork and forced to cross over into Syria.
In the words of Nadia Hardman, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, “Although Turkey provided temporary protection to 3.6 million Syrian refugees, it now looks like Turkey is trying to make northern Syria a refugee dumping ground.”
The situation is not much safer for the non-Syrians on the list. In addition to suffering from the same anti-refugee rhetoric and violence that Syrians do, they are also often illegally detained. Officially, Turkish law distinguishes between Removal Centers, which are used for pre-deportation, and Reception Centers, where individuals wait for their asylum requests to be processed.
In reality, the Turkish authorities often detain international protection applicants in Removal Centers. Many of these Removal Centers were once EU-funded Reception Centers, but were then repurposed. These Removal Centers are rife with human rights abuses and have extremely minimal access to legal aid or even phones. People can be detained in these centers for months without being informed of their rights.
The JMD’s Impact on Arrivals on Samos
The Greek island of Samos is located just seven kilometres from the Turkish coast, making it a key point of entry for those crossing into Greece, mostly illegally, by boat. For years, asylum seekers had to wait in overcrowded and deplorable conditions in the old Reception and Identification Center. As a result, in 2020, the government commissioned the construction of a Closed Control Access Center (CCAC) as a pilot model for a camp that is both a reception center and pre-deportation center in one.
It is located in a secluded part of the island and has 24/7 security cameras, a curfew, and multiple security checks to get in and out of the camp. This is in line with the securitization approach of the EU-Turkey deal. Although the CCAC was originally built to accommodate 2,040 people, it now regularly hosts nearly 4,000. According to Amnesty International, the conditions in the camp can be described as a “dystopian nightmare,” with overcrowding and a lack of access to basic services like health care and clean water.
The Greek authorities constructed the CCAC to streamline the processing of asylum requests and facilitate easy deportations and returns of irregular migrants. Upon arrival, asylum seekers are placed in detention while their police paperwork is processed. This is supposed to take five days, with a cutoff time of 25 days. However, in reality, the norm is 25 days, with cases in which people remained in detention for more than 50 days instead. During this time, they have little to no access to clean clothes, basic hygiene services, consistent food, or medical care.
The Legal Limbo Created by the JMD
Once this detention has passed, asylum seekers are required to wait for their “interview”, in which asylum officers assess whether their case grants them international protection based on the definition of a refugee provided in Article 1 of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Asylum seekers are required to prove that they left their countries due to “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” After their interview, they await their decision, which they are supposed to receive within a month, but they regularly experience extreme delays.
For people coming from the countries listed in the JMD, this process does not begin until they can prove the ‘admissibility’ of their claim. Before their asylum claim can be substantively reviewed, they have to prove that Turkey was also unsafe for them. In practice, this means that a Syrian, Afghan, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or Somali crossing from Turkey has to prove that they have been persecuted in two separate countries to receive protection in the EU. If their initial admissibility assessment is rejected, the Greek authorities do not review their asylum request at all.
Because Turkey is not currently accepting returns, and hasn’t been for five years, Greece cannot return people with inadmissible applications to Turkey. However, they are not given access to social services in Greece either. As a result, thousands of refugees are expelled from the camps and left to fend for themselves, leading to homelessness, exploitation, and poverty running rampant, particularly in the urban areas of Greece like Athens and Thessaloniki.
Inhumane Laws
The reinstatement of the JMD, despite clear rulings by the Council of State and CJEU, is not only illegal but undignified. It treats asylum-seekers coming from the most prevalent countries of origin as a security problem which it would prefer to push onto another country. It also means that Greece only grants refugee status to people who have been persecuted twice, which is an unreasonable amount of human suffering to require before granting protection.
The JMD is symptomatic of the general rise of xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric we are seeing in the political arena worldwide, and which is widespread in EU politics as well. The EU’s New Pact on Migration aims to increase the number of CCACs in Europe and invest more in security and the externalization of our borders. However, it overlooks human dignity. Laws like the JMD prioritize European nativism over European liberal ideals, forcing the same people to suffer the consequences over and over again.
Edited by Chelsea Bean
