Mohamad, a 25-year-old Syrian refugee, has had a good year. He began it struggling to find work as an electrician on the Turkish black market. As a Syrian, he is barred from the legal labour market, so he was never paid properly. He lived with friends in Izmir, the city on Turkey’s western coast, and wondered if he should take the boat to the Greek islands and then claim asylum in Europe like many Syrians his age.

Twelve months later, things have changed. Mohamad is married – an expensive undertaking that most young Syrians can’t afford in this environment. He lives with his wife in their own flat far from the Turkish coast. And he no longer seeks work as an electrician. “I don’t need to,” Mohamad coyly grins. “My new job makes me more money.”

It’s all thanks to the refugee crisis, which Mohamad has unexpectedly played his part in facilitating. For rather than joining the people fleeing to Europe, Mohamad now makes a fortune from sending them on their way. The unemployed electrician has become a wealthy people-smuggler.

He fell into it in May, when a relative needed extra hands to help in his smuggling network. At the time, no one thought the route between Turkey and Greece would become the main migrant gateway to Europe – least of all Mohamad. In 2014, little more than 43,000 people had been smuggled across this part of the Mediterranean. In 2015, the year Mohamad joined the network, more than 800,000 have made the trip.

Like many smugglers, Mohamad is astonished. In September, he predicted the flow would tail off by October. But October turned out to be the busiest month ever. Then he figured the numbers would drop in November – but that month the level was still three times higher than it had been during the whole of 2014. In December, Mohamad stopped making predictions.

A quiet and laconic man, he doesn’t fit the stereotype of a ruthless smuggler. He speaks with concern about the death of Alan Kurdi, the toddler whose death in the Aegean sparked belated outrage at the plight of Syrian refugees. But there is sometimes an emotional distance to the way he refers to others who have drowned in the boats his network sends to Greece. “It’s not our fault – it’s fate,” says Mohamad, sipping tea in Izmir’s smuggling quarter. “It’s what God decides. Only God knows who will make it and who won’t.”

Either way, Mohamad makes money. He’s a broker for his network, which means it’s his job to find passengers for his bosses. In peak season, each customer would pay in the region of $1,000 (£650) for a seat on one of the flimsy inflatables – and up to $200 to brokers such as Mohamad. Each boat will fit about 40 passengers, of whom Mohamad might have sourced a quarter. So in the busiest weeks, when his gang might send out 10 boats – Mohamad earned $20,000. And even in the slowest weeks of winter – when there is only one trip, and the brokerage fees are lower – he could still make $1,000. He need never fix a trip switch again.

There are those who have charted the 2015 refugee crisis by the levels of people arriving in Greece, or the number of shipwrecks. As a smuggler, Mohamad measures the passage of time with a different gauge: the frequency of police crackdowns. By his count, there have been just four so far in 2015, and they have mostly come when the Turkish police – often accused of turning a blind eye to the smuggling trade – is under pressure to be seen to do something. “What happened with Alan made them tighten up for a bit,” shrugs Mohamad. “It all depends on the pressure that they’re under.”

After the EU signed an aid deal with Turkey in early December, Turkish policemen began another round of arrests of refugees and smugglers alike – their biggest yet. Mohamad, however, is unbothered about the prospect of a full-scale crackdown. Nothing of this size can be curbed, he argues. “We can’t stop it,” Mohamad says. “Some people try seven or eight times until they make it. It’s the Syrians who determine whether they’ll go or not. The people risking the journey from Damascus, they’re the ones who are making this happen. Anyone who wants to go will go.”

And while they do, a former electrician is cashing in.