Families escape from Turkey, but at what cost?

What turned out to be a fateful journey began on the night of Thursday, September 26. Four families of nine adults and as many children scrambled over a belt of rocks in a remote spot on the Turkish coast to board a small speedboat. Believing it to be safer than the customary rubber dinghy, they had paid significantly extra for this boat. Academics, judges, businessmen and teachers, a few years ago they would never have thought that they would have to be smuggled out of their own country, but the trip across the Aegean was now their only option.

They had started putting on the lifejackets passed around by the smuggler when they realized there were't enough. "This isn't right," said Arife, a university professor who was traveling with her husband, Yussuf, their 3-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son. Fatma, a judge, agreed. "This obviously means that there are too many of us...

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