"We will no longer detain [migrants] who want to go to Europe," said a senior Turkish official on condition of anonymity. The decision to "open the doors" was taken during an extraordinary security council chaired by the head of state, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the night of Thursday 27 February to Friday 28 February.

The meeting was convened after the deaths of at least 33 Turkish soldiers in the Idleb region (northwest of Syria) in air strikes attributed by Ankara to the Syrian regime supported militarily by Russia. "We will no longer detain those who want to go to Europe," the official said on condition of anonymity.

According to Turkish media reports, groups of migrants were heading for the border with Greece in western Turkey on Friday morning. The news agency DHA thus reported that around 300 Syrian, Iraqi or even Iranian migrants had arrived in the province of Edirne, on the Greek border.

Migration crisis 2015

In the past, Turkey has repeatedly threatened to "open the doors" of Europe to migrants, observers see it as a way to put pressure on European Union countries still traumatized by the migration crisis of the summer 2015.

Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly fleeing conflicts in the Middle East, then traveled to Europe in transit through Turkey.

In March 2016, Turkey and the European Union concluded a controversial migration pact which drastically reduced the number of crossings to Greece. But Athens and the EU have seen an increase in arrivals in recent months.

Ankara has repeatedly called for more European aid to deal with the humanitarian disaster in Idleb, where nearly a million people have fled the bombing of the Damascus regime and its Russian ally, most of them taking refuge near the Turkish border.

"We are already hosting nearly four million refugees and do not have the means or the resources to allow an additional one million people to enter our territory," said the communications director of the presidency on Friday. Turkish, Fahrettin Altun.

With AFP

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