Sources: AP
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 hits Greece and Turkey, with an epicentre in the Aegean Sea. Flooding and destruction of houses is reported in Samos, where two people have died, and Izmir, where 20 people have died and 786 injured. 2020-10-30
The European Union proposes visa-free travel for Turkish citizens within Europe's Schengen Area and invites member states and EU lawmakers to endorse the move by June 30. The EU says Turkey has met all but five of the 72 criteria included in the agreement in exchange for its efforts to stop asylum seekers from reaching Europe. This visa deal also needs approval from the European Parliament. 2016-05-4
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Council President Donald Tusk, and European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans meet with Syrian refugees at a camp in the southeastern Turkish town of Nizip prior to talks with a delegation led by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu stresses the importance of implementation of European Union visa liberalization for Turkish citizens in assuring the success of Europe's migrant readmission agreement with his country. Tusk announces that the EU will spend 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) this summer on projects to improve the lives of Syrian migrants. 2016-04-23
European Union leaders offer Turkey a detailed package of cash and incentives to agree that all migrants attempting to cross the Aegean Sea by raft or boat would be sent back to Turkey which, in effect, becomes the region's migrant holding center. A number of stumbling blocks remain, such as raising the amount of aid from 3 billion euros to at least 6 billion euros; reducing the "72 arduous conditions" the Turks must meet to implement visa-free travel for Turkish citizens; Europe agrees to accelerate talks with Ankara on its EU bid; etc. Human Rights Watch protests the proposed fast-track collective expulsions that fail to take individual circumstances into account and breach peoples' right to seek asylum. 2016-03-18
A boat carrying Iraqi Kurd migrants sinks off the Greek island of Samos in the Aegean Sea off Turkey's Anatolian coast, killing at least 24 people, including several children, with 11 others missing. 2016-01-28
Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency reports 11 migrants, including three children, drowned, and the Turkish coast guard rescued seven Syrians from a capsized boat headed to the Greek island of Samos. 2015-12-22
The Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex, in six separate operations, rescue a total of 383 migrants attempting to sail from Turkey to the eastern Greek islands. 2015-11-7
Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras lashes out at European "ineptness" in handling the continent's massive immigration crisis. The Associated Press reports 31 more people — mostly children — drowned in shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea near the islands of Kalymnos and Rhodes. Turkey's state-run agency says four children drowned and two others are missing after two new accidents with boats headed to Greece's Lesbos and Samos islands. The death toll in the Aegean Sea over the past three days is at least 50. The Greek coast guard says they rescued 600 people in the past 24 hours, while thousands more made it safely from Turkey to Greece's southeastern islands. 2015-10-30
Eleven European and Balkan leaders meet about the migrant crisis at an emergency summit in Brussels, Belgium; Turkey did not attend. The Prime Minister of Slovenia says the EU will ‘start falling apart’ within weeks if the migrant crisis continues unchecked. Huge divisions remain among EU states over how to deal with the influx of hundreds of thousands of migrants. 2015-10-25
At least one person is reportedly killed after Bulgarian border guards open fire on a group of illegal migrants after they attempted to cross the border from Turkey. The incident happened near the southeastern town of Sredets. 2015-10-15