Over 7,000 migrants rescued in Turkish waters last year

ANKARA

The Turkish Coast Guard rescued more than 7,000 migrants in the country’s territorial waters in 2025 as thousands of migrants attempted to reach Europe in search of a better life, with 60 of them losing their lives in the process, media reports said on Feb. 12.

According to data from the Transport and Infrastructure Ministry cited by Turkish media, 255 irregular migration incidents requiring search-and-rescue operations were recorded in Turkish waters last year.

In those incidents, 7,215 migrants were rescued, 60 were found dead and two were reported missing. Over the past five years, a total of 103,488 migrants were rescued at sea, the report said.

The year with the highest number of such incidents was 2015, when 58,570 migrants were rescued in 1,540 cases, while 263 bodies were recovered and 201 people were reported missing.

Most recently, on Feb. 12, a rubber boat carrying migrants sank off the coast of Foça in the Turkish Aegean province of İzmir. Three people died and 33 were rescued. Search-and-rescue operations by air and sea were ongoing between Foça and Karaburun for four missing individuals.

Rights groups and international media have repeatedly accused Greece of illegally pushing would-be asylum seekers back into Turkish waters, supporting their claims with video footage and witness testimonies.

Questions are also mounting over a deadly collision last week between a Greek Coast Guard patrol vessel and a high-speed migrant boat off the island of Chios, near the Turkish coast.

Some 15 asylum seekers died, while 24 survivors were hospitalized in Chios with injuries.

Eighteen of its coastguard members are being prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter due to negligence in the sinking of the trawler Adriana in June 2023.

The United Nations said around 750 people died in that tragedy, one of the worst migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean in the past decade.