Posted on 10/30/2018 6:35:24 PM PDT by Texas Fossil
“We were in a beat-up dingy as we crossed the Evros River at night. When I suddenly realized after 20 minutes that we were on our way to hitting some brush between two small islets, I said, “Are we going to die like the mother and her three children who drowned seven days ago?’”
Kürşad Alçı, a 41-year-old math teacher, left Turkey for Greece by crossing the Evros River together with his wife and colleague, 39-year-old physics teacher Sabahat and their daughters Melahat (9) and Saadet (7) at 01:00 a.m. on July 27, 2018. After their boat capsized, they endured an ordeal for three nights, helpless and without food, waiting to be rescued on a small islet on the river that demarcates the Turkish-Greek border.
Their risky endeavor took place only one week after a tragic incident in which Hatice Akçabay and her three young children drowned when their boat capsized in the Evros.
When Kürşad Alçı and his companions set sail in a boat on the same route, the desperate plea of Murat Akçabay, who in a video message called for help in locating his missing wife and children after the boat accident, was vivid in their minds. “We felt the very recent tragedy deep in our hearts, on our boat,” Kürşad Alçı said.
“l watched the video of Murat Akçabay, saw his tears for his wife and children. There was absolutely no guarantee that we would not experience a similar tragedy, an accident. I even considered giving up well before the journey,” he said, recalling the moments leading up to his fateful river-crossing. “But,” he said, elaborating on why he kept going, “I thought about my daughters’ future. Freedom was something that we desperately needed, like bread and water.”
(Excerpt) Read more at stockholmcf.org ...
And then you read about 2 families struggle to free themselves from persecution in Turkey, to simply stay alive and not in prison. Imagine the Desperation!
And the number of people affected? 100's of Thousands of them have been arrested on the most contrived charges. Welcome to the horrors of the Neo Ottoman World of Erdogan the Islamist.
Google maps calls it the Maritsa River. A decade ago we tried to walk into Greece from Turkey. We got our passports stamped leaving Greece. But armed Turkish border agents wouldn’t let us walk across the bridge into Greece. So we turned back. But then Turkish immigration wouldn’t let us into Turkey without stamps from Greece! We were stuck in no man’s land between the two borders! Eventually we got our passports stamped to allow entry when I was in the front of the line before a Japanese tour group and refused to move.
Thank you for that description.
You understand this situation more than anyone.
May God help the Good People who are caught in this Evil of Turkey under Erdogan and his Islamists.
I look forward to the day when Istanbul will be Constantinople again.
Yes, may it be so.
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