Turkish Coast Guard Rescues Stranded Migrants by Helicopter

Dozens of migrants were rescued by the Turkish Coast Guard on Thursday after their rubber dinghy snagged on a rocky outcropping off Turkey’s Aegean coast.

In a rescue recorded by the Turkish authorities, a helicopter winched people to safety near Bademli, on the coast near the island of Lesbos, Greece. A partly deflated dinghy could be seen on the rocks.

Fifty-one people, including 15 children, were rescued, six by helicopter and the rest by fishermen who transferred them to coast guard vessels, according to a statement from the coast guard.

The nationalities of the rescued migrants were not immediately clear. The route across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece has often been deadly. Dozens of migrants have drowned attempting the Aegean crossing this year.

The perils were seared into the world’s consciousness in September 2015 by a photograph of a young Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body had washed up on a Syrian beach.

And while it has been more than two years since an unprecedented number of refugees and migrants made their way to Europe, driven in large part by the war in Syria, European Union member states have struggled to devise a unified system for dealing with the humanitarian crisis. The bloc has disagreed on how to provide aid and resources for migrants, and argued about quotas for the union’s 28 member states.

While a European Union arrangement with Turkey has largely shut down the once well-traveled route across the Aegean, the rescue on Thursday was a reminder that some are still making the journey.

During a meeting of European Union leaders on Thursday, where migration was on the agenda, Donald Tusk, the former prime minister of Poland and current European Council president, spoke out against obligatory relocation quotas for refugees and migrants. He noted that the divide on the issue was largely geographic, between eastern and western member states.

“These divisions are accompanied by emotions which make it hard to find even a common language and rational arguments for this debate,” Mr. Tusk said.

The Aegean rescue also came the same day that a task force of officials from the European Union, African Union, the United Nations refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration met in Brussels to discuss deteriorating conditions for migrants inside Libya.

The cross-Mediterranean route from Libya is how the largest number of migrants are currently trying to make their way to Europe, and they are vulnerable to smugglers with little regard for safety. Thousands have been stranded in the North African nation, with reports that some are being sold as slaves. The task force aims to resettle those left in limbo in Libya.

Around 3,100 migrants have been given assistance to return to their home countries from Libya since Nov. 28 as part of an emergency, voluntary operation organized by the task force, according to a news release from the group.

The task force aims to provide assistance for an additional 15,000 migrants in Libya to be returned to their home countries by February 2018.

“It is — I believe — a turning point in our work to save and protect lives of migrants, in particular inside Libya but also along the route, and dismantling the traffickers networks,” the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said in a statement following the meeting.