“A moment in history”: making a perilous sea crossing with refugees – photo report | Refugees

SArriving at a Turkish beach ready to join a group of Syrian refugees on an inflatable boat bound for Greece, photojournalist Güliz Vural’s biggest fear was that the traffickers organizing the illegal crossing would not let her board.

If she had known that within hours of leaving Turkey she would be under arrest, accused of human trafficking herself, she would have thought twice before traveling.

On that beautiful October morning, the smugglers intimidated and humiliated the refugees who had gathered on the shore. “They were dangerous and rude people,” Vural, 41, said through an interpreter.

But they agreed she could accompany the migrants and eventually they left, nearly 50 people crammed into a boat designed for 12, their fluorescent life jackets a patchwork of colors against the clear sky. Soon they were in the cobalt blue waters of the Aegean Sea, leaving behind the Bay of Sivrice in Turkey and heading for the Greek island of Lesvos.

The families stood firm. Some have rubbed and kissed rosaries, before ritually throwing them overboard.

They made the 90-minute trip mostly in silence, except that they sometimes raised their hands in the air in prayer. “Ya Allah!they would cry. “Oh my God!”

Dressed in a wetsuit and perched on the bow, not daring to move for fear of destabilizing the boat, Vural spent the trip raising her camera lens to the anxious faces of her fellow travelers. “I took pictures all the time. I wanted to document [their experience]. It was a moment in history. “

After the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Vural spent three years documenting the lives of refugees who had fled violence and the destruction of their homeland. She met families living in temporary accommodation in Istanbul and traveled to the border town of Reyhanlı in the southern province of Hatay, near the Syrian border.

The heartache and pain she saw in the people she met resonated with her. “My Kurdish family was driven out of southeastern Turkey in 1977. Even though I was born in Istanbul and was not a refugee, I felt a lack of belonging. We have lost our culture; it was as if our Kurdish history had been erased. When I saw how traumatic the life of Syrian refugees was, it reminded me of the trauma of my own family, and it really affected me.

Some of the refugees she met were happy to stay in Turkey, but others dreamed of going to Europe. Stories of perilous sea crossings between Turkey and Greece began to emerge as waves of refugees risked their lives to start anew in the west. In total, more than one million migrants and refugees entered Europe in 2015, the vast majority by sea from Turkey. The tragic image of two-year-old Syrian Alan Kurdi lying face down on a Turkish beach after drowning on a sea crossing has come to symbolize the plight of people who have dared to believe in a better future.

According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 3,700 migrants died trying to cross the Mediterranean in 2015 – more than 800 of them on the Turkey-Greece route that Vural documented. Since 2014, more than 22,000 migrants were reported as missing in the Mediterranean.

It was the biggest migration crisis in memory and Vural felt she had to save it somehow. “I saw a lot of journalists [reporting] shore events. I wanted to be on the boat with [the refugees]. “

In October 2015, she went to the Aegean coast, just south of Çanakkale, a known starting point for illegal crossings “My husband is a journalist and he understood why I had to go, but I have nothing said to my parents and my daughter. I didn’t want them to worry, ”she says.

The dangerous journey is costly: the migrants Vural joined paid around £ 2,000 per person. They were understandably worried about the trip, but Vural saw their courage as well. They had to give up their belongings when the smugglers ordered them to make room for everyone and sneak in. They also bid farewell to their families and the lives left behind. “They only brought the future with them,” says Vural.

After arriving in Greece, the migrants were sent to a refugee camp for treatment. But Vural was arrested by the Greek Coast Guard as a suspected smuggler.

“For the first time in my life I was handcuffed and then taken to the judge, who said I would be tried for two serious crimes: human trafficking and illegal entry into the country. . They said I risked 25 years in prison.

She was shocked and scared but, she said, “I tried not to have any regrets. “

After appeals to the Turkish embassy, ​​letters from her newspaper and a guarantee of € 3,000 (£ 2,600), authorities admitted she was a journalist and released her five days later. But her confiscated phone was never returned to her, so she was unable to contact the refugees whose numbers she had taken.

But Vural had the photographs. She named the series Journey in the Death Boat, but Turkish media, which splashed her front page photo during her arrest, showed no interest in the story of the refugee journey. Although he was never given a reason, Vural believes it is because the project criticizes Turkey for allowing the smugglers to operate.

Next week the project will be shown for the first time in the UK at an exhibition at Coventry Cathedral from November 10 to 12 as part of the sixth Global Peace Forum on the rise. The series is a tribute to his determination and to the refugees who risked everything for a better life. Today, she often thinks of migrants, wondering how many have reached the destination of their dreams: Germany.

Vural is now a migrant herself. In April, she moved to the UK to set up her photography business, dismayed by the political climate in Turkey, where “opposition journalists no longer have the right to life,” she says, since The Turkish government cracked down on free speech after the 2016 failed coup attempt.

She is fully aware of the freedom she has to return to Turkey whenever she wishes. She plans to use this freedom to continue photographing those who are unlikely to return home. “I want to continue working with refugees in the UK,” she says.