As international reverberations continued on Thursday in the wake of a heart-wrenching image of a drowned toddler face down on an eponymous beach on Turkey’s Aegean coast, reports emerged that Turkish authorities actually blocked the child’s family from legally emigrating to Canada!
Twelve people drowned as a result of a failed attempt by a group of Syrian nationals to clandestinely reach the nearby Greek isle of Kos.
Impervious the Anatolia-size culpability of the Turkish state and authorities in turning a “blind eye” to the massive people-smuggling network on Turkey’s western coast and on its land border with Greece, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan waxed “Orwellian” on Wednesday, blaming Europe for the problem.
The increasingly authoritarian Erdogan accused EU states of turning the Mediterranean into a “cemetery” for migrants, saying Europe is responsible for the death of every single victim.

“European countries, which turned the Mediterranean Sea — the cradle of ancient civilizations — into a migrant cemetery are party to the crime that takes place when each refugee loses their life,” the Islamist politician said in Ankara.
Images of lifeless three-year-old Aylan shocked the world on Wednesday. His body washed up on a beach in the resort of Bodrum (ancient Halicarnassus), an image that rapidly went viral on social media. His four four-year-old brother, Ghaleb, and mother Rehan also drowned.
Hours later Turkish authorities paraded four suspects, all Syrians, they claimed were responsible for the botched smuggling of their compatriots from the Turkish coast — territory where Erdogan serves as…head of state — to the Greek isle.
Reports state that the family, from the predominately Kurdish Syrian town of Kobane, wanted to eventually reach Canada. An aunt of the family, who has lived for 20 years in Vancouver, had issued an invitation, with reports stating that official Turkey refused to issue an exit visit.

“We don’t think it’s fair to burden us with a problem that the whole world faces,” Erdogan said of the conflict on Turkey’s border, reminding of similar positions by Turkish governments during the conflagration that was the Second World War.