‘A moment in history’: making a perilous sea-crossing with refugees – photo essay

Standing on a Turkish beach ready to join a group of Syrian refugees on an inflatable boat bound for Greece, the photojournalist Güliz Vural’s biggest fear was that the people traffickers organising the illegal crossing would not let her onboard.

If she had known that within a few hours of leaving Turkey she would be under arrest, accused of people trafficking herself, she would have thought twice about the journey.

On that bright October morning the smugglers intimidated and humiliated the refugees who had gathered on the shore. “They were dangerous people, and rude,” Vural, 41, says through an interpreter.

But they agreed that she could accompany the migrants and eventually they set off, nearly 50 people crammed on to a boat designed for 12, their fluorescent lifejackets