AP PHOTOS: Thousands brave the cold to cross sea to Greece

The seas are rough and cold. The wind is bitter. The overcrowded smugglers' boats are far from seaworthy, with many unable even to make it across a few miles of water — and the bodies of those who drown as the boats sink are fished out of the churning seas day by day.

Yet tens of thousands of men, women and children fleeing violence and poverty in their homelands continue to risk their lives this winter to make the relatively short but dangerous journey from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands, seeking a better future in Europe.

AP PHOTOS: Editor's picks from the Mideast and Pakistan

In this Thursday, Dec. 31, 2015 file photo, a Palestinian woman shops on the last day of 2015 in Gaza city.  

AP PHOTOS: Editor's pick from Mideast, Afghanistan-Pakistan

In this Wednesday, Dec. 16, 2015 photo, the gold mask of King Tutankhamun is displayed in its glass case, in the Egyptian Museum near Tahrir Square, in Cairo. Antiquities Minister Mamdouh el-Damaty says the famed golden burial mask has been fixed, over a year after the beard was accidentally knocked off and hastily glued back with epoxy. A German-Egyptian team began the restoration work in October.  

AP PHOTOS: Objects left on the beach by migrants on Lesbos

In this Monday, Oct. 5, 2015 photo, a children's toy is portrayed on a beach next to the town of Molyvos, on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos. The migrants arrive by the hundreds on the beaches of the Greek island of Lesbos. And in their eagerness to move on, they leave behind belongings they carried with them.   

AP Photos: Portraits of refugees along Europe migrant trail

In this photo taken on Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, Syrian refugee Mahmoud Naoura, 30, who came from Aleppo, Syria, poses for a picture while holding his daughter Huda, 5, who was injured in 2012 by a government bombing on their home which made her lose her sight, shortly after arriving on a dinghy from the Turkish coast to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos. Naoura said “I just want to cure my daughter. Huda will see again, inshallah, and when she will open her eyes I want her to see a safe environment around.”   

AP PHOTOS: Suruc is the largest refugee camp in Turkey

Twenty-day-old Hevan Muslim, who was born from Syrian refugees parents at a refugee camp in Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border, cries, Friday, June 19, 2015. Ahead of World Refugee Day on Saturday, June 20, 2015, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated that a total of 11.6 million people from Syria had been displaced by the conflict by the end of last year, the largest such figure worldwide. Turkey is the world's biggest refugee host with 1.59 million refugees, according to the most recent U.N. figures.