Syrian boy’s body photo in Turkey Beach turns 10; Image impacted how Europe deals with migratory crisis

Iconic photo shows Syrian Alan Kurdi, 3, after dying in wreck in Turkey Nilüfer Demir/AP for exactly ten years ago, an image made the world stop: the body of a 3 -year -old came from stomach on the edge of a beach in Turkey, dragged by the waves of the Mediterranean Sea after the boat where he was wreck. ✅ Click here to follow the G1 international news channel on WhatsApp the story of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian boy who fled from his country with his family and tried to reach Europe, was not an isolated case – although perhaps one of the most extreme. Kurdi was one of around 3,700 people who, according to the International Organization for Migration (IM), drowned in the Mediterranean trying to enter Europe in 2015. And his image lying in the sand became the great symbol of the refugee crisis, as the movement of that year was called more than 1.3 million people have reached the back of Europe fleeing with conflicts, the largest exodus until then since World War II. The crisis made governments of the time redesign the course of their migratory policies. Until then, the European Union was still trying to deal with the multitudes of migrants and refugees who landed daily on islands mainly from Greece, but also from Italy and Spain. Kurdi’s body was found on a beach in Bodrum, a city on the southwest coast of Turkey, from where small vessels came out with groups of people mainly from Syria, a country that came into a civil war four year earlier. Because of this, the Turkish government granted, as early as 2011, automatic asylum for citizens of neighboring Syria. But the refugee camps where most of them were taken were becoming saturated and, given the prolongation of war, many families began to travel illegally to Europe. In parallel, people traffickers were organized and created crossing routes between the coast of Türkiye and Greek islands. In 2015, the good time of European summer helped, and everything confused to create the largest migratory movement on the planet since the end of World War II – which, years later, was surpassed by the Ukrainian exodus due to the Russian invasion in 2022. Islands in Greece were crowded and became the meeting point between European tourists and immigrants who accumulated in improvised tents before traveling. Thousands of people walked daily on roads and fields of Slovakia, Hungary and Austria in search of destination – in most cases Germany. Family wreck in put the body of Alan Kurdi is carried by soldier DHA/AP was precisely in Germany that Alan Kurdi’s family intended to arrive after years living in refugee camps in Türkiye. His parents tried to go to Canada, where an aunt was already living, but a previous request for a visa of refuge was denied, and they then headed for most of the Syrian families trying to escape the war. At dawn on September 2, 2015, Alan, his brother and his parents entered an inflatable boat in Bodrum on his way to the Greek island of Kos. The trip would be short: no more than an hour – at the time, hundreds of European tourists who spent the summer in Kos made the same route, but in the opposite direction and large boats, to spend the day shopping in Turkey and then returning to Greek island. But a wave made Alan Curdi’s family on the way: the boat. The boy’s father, Abdullah Curdi, tried to hold his family, he said later reported to the press. But it failed, and Alan, his brother and his mother drowned. “I never believed a photo could make this impact,” Turkish photographer Nilufer Demir said, who took the photo at an interview at the British BBC network. “I had to take the picture and I didn’t hesitate. And I would like it to change the course of things.” Live broadcast G1 the story and, especially the image, made by the Turkish photographer, which accompanied the movement of boats in Bodrum, shocked the world. Leaders from European Union countries manifested, and the government of Canada offered asylum to Alan’s father, who denied and went to Iraqi Kurdistan. The boy’s family opened an organization to prevent more people from taking the dangerous journey. However, a decade of anti-immigration, a decade after the refugee crisis, the migratory situation in Europe has not improved-and, on the contrary, far-right movements grew with anti-immigration discourses. Over 2024, the arrival of irregular migrants to the European Union fell to about 240,000, less than a quarter of 2015 levels, according to data from the EU border border agency. Of these, only 11,200 migrants arrived in the Greek islands last year, according to data from UNHCR, the United Nations Agency for Refugees. But, according to the agency, migratory routes have diversified and became more difficult – case of the path between North Africa and southern Spain, which has gained body in recent years. As a reaction to the 2015 crisis, the European Union began to discuss the creation of a common migratory policy, which to this day does not exist in the bloc, but has never been able to approve it. As an antidote, he created a reistribution program for foreigners who reach the back of Greece, Italy and Spain. In addition to new routes, new problems have also arisen: the crisis ended up feeding an anti-immigration movement that has become one of Europe’s main political forces. For the professor of international relations at the University of Roraima João Carlos Jarochinski, who lives in Portugal, the lack of response from European leaders of the time encouraged this movement. “Today there is here in Europe a predominance of governments with this anti-immigration perspective. The speech became so much popular that the parties also end up electorally pressured by the presence of these radical groups,” said Jarochinski. “Even left leaders love the speech.” In August, UK Prime Minister Keir Stmerer showed this stance. Faced with cases of migrants trying to reach the country through the Channel of Mancha, leaving France, said: “Whoever gets here in boats (through the Channel of the Mancha) will be deported. I warned.”

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