‘We fought hand-to-hand’ to hold the Evros border
A year on, two protagonists of the successful effort to prevent a push by thousands of migrants at the Greek-Turkish frontier talk about the operation
A year after a failed attempt by thousands of undocumented migrants and refugees to force their way into Greece through its northeastern land border with Turkey, the Evros frontier has evolved into an almost impenetrable European fortress.
The heroic efforts of a handful of border guards and police officers at the Kastanies customs post on the night of February 28, 2020 succeeded in thwarting what was essentially an effort by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to breach Greece’s border, using migrants as his battering ram. The successful quashing of the push also alerted the European Union to the threat on its external border, prompting top officials from Brussels to visit the area, on the initiative of the Greek prime minister, just a few hours after the attempted invasion was stopped.
Evros has undergone a rapid transformation in the wake of those events. Apart from new steel fences, electronic surveillance systems and specially trained Greek and European guards, Evros has also been bolstered geopolitically by the selection of nearby Alexandroupoli
port for NATO military operations, as an alternative to the Bosporus Strait, for the transport of cargo by rail to the Black Sea and for the construction of a fuel pipeline supplying Alliance forces in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In fact, Turkish media made no secret of Ankara’s annoyance with NATO’s recent use of Alexandroupoli to bring in forces and troops participating in the huge Defender 21 exercises in Romania and Bulgaria.
The conversation may have been much different today, however, if Erdogan’s “hybrid army” of irregular migrants had made it through Kastanies just a year ago. It would have been a public relations disaster for Greece – which would have appeared incapable of defending its border against a few hundred unarmed civilians – and a boon for Erdogan, while the political instability it would have signaled in Greece would have steeped the country in crisis.
Two of the unsung heroes who helped hold the border at Kastanies, police sergeants Panagiotis Harelas and Dimitris Derventlis, spoke to Kathimerini recently of how a handful of guards managed to prevent the violent push.
“We fought hand-to-hand, we doled out and endured a lot of thrashings, but we held out and our defense in those first few hours altered the course of events,” says Derventlis.
“It was tough, but we were emboldened by a sense of duty and the bravery of our superiors who stood on the frontline giving orders even though they were also being pelted with rocks,” he adds.
The conversation may have been much different today if Erdogan’s
‘hybrid army’ of irregular migrants had made it through Kastanies just a year ago