Three boats carrying 202 people departed in the early hours of the morning from the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios.
Migrants on board the first ferry were escorted ashore by Turkish police in the port town of Dikili on Monday morning, as authorities set up a tarp to prevent gathered media from seeing on board. A second boat docked shortly afterward.
Greek authorities said there were 136 migrants on board the two boats from Lesbos – the majority of them from Pakistan, with others from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India, as well as two Syrians who had returned voluntarily.
The 66 migrants on board the boat from Chios included 42 Afghans, authorities said.
According to Greek officials, the migrants had not applied for asylum. A Turkish official said Turkey has agreed to accept up to 500 migrants per day.
Protesters opposed to the deportations also gathered at Dikili’s port. One held a sign reading: “Refugees welcome. This is your home.”
The migrants are the first to be deported under the auspices of a contentious “one in, one out” deal struck between the European Union and Turkey last month.
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A woman cries after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea about 15 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on July 25, 2017. More than 6,600 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in January 2018, according to the UN migration agency, and more than 240 people died on the Mediterranean Sea during that month.
PHOTO:
Santi Palacios/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Refugees and migrants get off a fishing boat at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in October 2015.
PHOTO:
Antonio Masiello/NurPhoto via ZUMA Press
Photos: Syria's civil war, in pictures
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants step over dead bodies while being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya in October 2016. Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis was on a Spanish rescue boat that encountered several crowded migrant boats. Messinis said the rescuers counted 29 dead bodies -- 10 men and 19 women, all between 20 and 30 years old. "I've (seen) in my career a lot of death," he said. "I cover war zones, conflict and everything. I see a lot of death and suffering, but this is something different. Completely different."
PHOTO:
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Authorities stand near the body of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey, in September 2015. Alan, his brother and their mother drowned while fleeing Syria. This photo was shared around the world, often with a Turkish hashtag that means "Flotsam of Humanity."
PHOTO:
DOGAN NEWS AGENCY/EPA/LANDOV
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants board a train at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, after the station was reopened in September 2015.
PHOTO:
Matt Cardy/Getty Images
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Children cry as migrants in Greece try to break through a police cordon to cross into Macedonia in August 2015. Thousands of migrants -- most of them fleeing Syria's bitter conflict -- were stranded in a no-man's land on the border.
PHOTO:
GEORGI LICOVSKI/EPA/LANDOV
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
The Kusadasi Ilgun, a sunken 20-foot boat, lies in waters off the Greek island of Samos in November 2016.
PHOTO:
Alexis Malagaris/Samos Divers Association via AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants bathe outside near a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse in Subotica, Serbia, in January 2017.
PHOTO:
Srdjan Stevanovic/Getty Images
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A police officer in Calais, France, tries to prevent migrants from heading for the Channel Tunnel to England in June 2015.
PHOTO:
PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A migrant walks past a burning shack in the southern part of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, France, in March 2016. Part of the camp was being demolished -- and the inhabitants relocated -- in response to unsanitary conditions at the site.
PHOTO:
PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants stumble as they cross a river north of Idomeni, Greece, attempting to reach Macedonia on a route that would bypass the border-control fence in March 2016.
PHOTO:
Vadim Ghirda/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
In September 2015, an excavator dumps life vests that were previously used by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.
PHOTO:
Petros Giannakouris/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
The Turkish coast guard helps refugees near Aydin, Turkey, after their boat toppled en route to Greece in January 2016.
A woman sits with children around a fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni in March 2016.
PHOTO:
Vadim Ghirda/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A column of migrants moves along a path between farm fields in Rigonce, Slovenia, in October 2015.
PHOTO:
Darko Bandic/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A ship crowded with migrants flips onto its side in May 2016 as an Italian navy ship approaches off the coach of Libya. Passengers had rushed to the port side, a shift in weight that proved too much. Five people died and more than 500 were rescued.
PHOTO:
Italian navy via AP Photo
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Refugees break through a barbed-wire fence on the Greece-Macedonia border in February 2016, as tensions boiled over regarding new travel restrictions into Europe.
PHOTO:
Pierre Crom/Getty Images
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Policemen try to disperse hundreds of migrants by spraying them with fire extinguishers during a registration procedure in Kos, Greece, in August 2015.
PHOTO:
Yorgos Karahalis/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A member of the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch holds a migrant baby who drowned following the capsizing of a boat off Libya in May 2016.
PHOTO:
Christian Buttner/EIKON NORD GMBH GERMANY via AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A migrant in Gevgelija, Macedonia, tries to sneak onto a train bound for Serbia in August 2015.
PHOTO:
Boris Grdanoski/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the Mediterranean from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, in August 2016.
PHOTO:
Emilio Morenatti/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Refugees rescued off the Libyan coast get their first sight of Sardinia as they sail in the Mediterranean Sea toward Cagliari, Italy, in September 2015.
PHOTO:
Gregorio Borgia/AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Local residents and rescue workers help migrants from the sea after a boat carrying them sank off the island of Rhodes, Greece, in April 2015.
PHOTO:
ARGIRIS MANTIKOS/AFP/Getty Images
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Investigators in Burgenland, Austria, inspect an abandoned truck that contained the bodies of refugees who died of suffocation in August 2015. The 71 victims -- most likely fleeing war-ravaged Syria -- were 60 men, eight women and three children.
PHOTO:
Rex Features via AP
Photos: Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
Syrian refugees sleep on the floor of a train car taking them from Macedonia to the Serbian border in August 2015. How to help the ongoing migrant crisis
PHOTO:
ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images
Under the terms of the deal, anyone who crosses into Greece illegally after March 20 will be sent back to Turkey.
For every Syrian sent back to Turkey, a vetted Syrian refugee will go from Turkey to Europe to be resettled, although the maximum number is capped at 72,000 people. In return, the EU will give Turkey billions in funding to help it provide for the migrants within its borders, and grant various political concessions.
Speaking to reporters in Dikili on Monday, Mustafa Toprak, governor of Izmir province, revealed that Syrian migrants who are deported to Turkey would not be sent by ship like the first group of deportees, but would be flown to the southern city of Adana.
From there, they would be sent to camps throughout Turkey’s southeast, where the country shares a border with Syria.
“For every Syrian transported by plane to Adana then taken to camps, the same number of Syrians will be sent to Europe,” he said.
The plan was agreed upon last month as Europe struggles to respond to the largest migration crisis since World War II. More than 1 million people made “irregular arrivals” inside Europe’s borders in 2015 alone, many of them displaced by the Syrian civil war.
About 2.7 million Syrian refugees are registered in Turkey.
Whether the agreement will be successful in stemming the tide of people into the EU remains to be seen, and migrant routes are likely to shift.
A backlog in Greece has built up after its neighbor Macedonia and other countries along the migration path into Western Europe began blocking access to migrants.
The new rules may divert the thousands fleeing their home countries farther west to nations such as Italy.
On Friday, a report released by Amnesty International condemned the EU agreement and said Turkey has been forcibly sending people back to Syria, constituting a violation of international law – something Turkey denies.
“In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have willfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day,” said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s director for Europe and Central Asia.
A statement from the Turkish foreign ministry said the Amnesty International report “does not reflect the truth.”
The statement said that Turkey had been observing an “open door policy” for five years with regard to refugees, and complying with the principle of “no returns.”
Erin McLaughlin, Elinda Labropoulou, and Barbara Arvanitidis reported from Lesbos, Greece; Phil Black and Gul Tuysuz reported from Dikili, Turkey; Tiffany Ap wrote from Hong Kong and Tim Hume wrote from London.
