Two Syrian men received jail sentences Friday over their alleged role in the death of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian refugee boy who became an international martyr for the refugee crisis.

A Turkish court in Bodrum, the seaside city from which Kurdi's fatal journey took off, sentenced Muwafaka Alabash and Asem Alfrhad to more than four years in prison over the boat accident that killed Kurdi and four others, reported Anadolu Agency .

The two alleged smugglers were convicted of human trafficking but were cleared of causing the deaths through deliberate negligence, a charge that could have brought them a 35-year sentence.

Kurdi and his family were on their way to the Greek island of Kos when their boat left Bodrum. It was their third attempt at the journey, which they hoped would eventually lead them to Canada.

The boat capsized shortly after the nighttime departure, causing the drowning of Kurdi, his mother, his brother and two other refugee children. Kurdi's father Abdullah Kurdi was the only family member to survive the tragedy.

Following the incident, photographs of Kurdi's lifeless body washed up on a shore near Bodrum made headlines around the world. The tragic photos drew border-transcending humanitarian cries and transformed Kurdi into a symbol of refugee suffering.

The international reaction sparked a fiercely renewed debate on the refugee crisis, especially in Europe. It also served as a shocking wake up call beyond policy-making circles about the magnitude of the issue and the human stories which lie beyond the statistics.

However, the roles of Alabash and Alfrhad in the accident, as well as the events of the night, remain somewhat unclear due to a number of conflicting narratives from the survivors of the tragedy.

According to AP, the timing of the verdict seems to suggest it was an attempt to show Turkey's increased efforts in reducing human trafficking, as Turkish trials usually take months to complete. This verdict came only one month after the trial began and just before the country's key European Union summit on March 7 for combating the migration outbreak.

Turkey, one of the countries most affected by the overwhelming influx of refugees fleeing conflict in the Middle East, has been coordinating efforts with the EU to stop the flow of migrants into Europe .

More than 850,000 of the more than 1.1 million refugees who arrived in the EU in 2015, arrived by crossing the Mediterranean from Turkey, according to the International Organization for Migration .