Beach resort of Bodrum, Turkey; Witness to Syrian refugee crisis

Bodrum: A port city and beach resort in the southwestern Aegean Region of Turkey.

Bodrum port city was in news on 3 September 2015 as pathetic images of a three year old boy Aylan Kurdi’s body was seen lying on its shore.

The Aegean Sea is a subdivision of the Mediterranean Sea and lies between Greece in the north and Turkey in the south.

Aylan Kurdi was part of lakhs of Syrians who are trying to leave Turkey and reach more promising nearby islands like kos (22 km from Bodrum) and Lesbo of Greece; then to mainland Greece or Serbia; then to Hungary and finally up to Germany in the northern Europe.

As per an estimate, Turkey is home to nearly 2 millions of Syrians who fled the country to escape from the ongoing civil war.

The armed conflict began in March 2011 between the forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule. The conflict was further aggravated since the involvement of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014.

The violence has so far led to the death of around 2 lakh civilians and internal displacement of 7.6 million people.

It has also led to the biggest refugee crisis in the recent memory as around 3.9 million people are seeking refuge in neighboring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

Further, the refugee crisis is also spreading to the Europe in recent times that is evident from thousands of deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, unrest in Hungary, Serbia, Greece, etc due to inward flux of Syrian refugees.

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