Turkey threatens Europe with a flow of migrants, Athens strengthens its border

Text by: RFI Follow

Greece announced on Friday that it would strengthen the border with Turkey in response to Ankara, which calls on Westerners to give it "concrete" support in Syria and threatens to reopen its borders to migrants. The fighting in the Syrian city of Idleb has pushed nearly 900,000 people onto the road.

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Turkey continued to bombard positions of the Bashar al-Assad regime on Friday. A response that comes after the death of at least 33 Turkish soldiers in strikes attributed by Ankara to the Syrian regime in the Idleb region.

And Turkey, which calls on the West to support it in Syria, is once again raising the threat of migration. It has decided to reopen its borders to migrants, but the operation looks like a communication campaign, according to our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer : no Turkish official has publicly announced that the borders of Turkey with the European Union - in this case, with Greece and Bulgaria - were now wide open on the Turkish side.

In reality, the authorities allow Syrian refugees and irregular migrants to board buses bound for Edirne, for the land border, or for Izmir and Kanakkale, for the maritime border.

Several concordant sources also claim that the Turkish police, gendarmes, customs officers and coast guards have been ordered to turn a blind eye to the smugglers' activities and therefore to the hundreds of people who flock to the gates of Europe .

Officially, the Turkish authorities act as if they are overwhelmed. " We can no longer retain the refugees, " said the spokesman for the ruling party. " If the situation in Idleb worsens, this influx to our western borders will continue to increase, " said the foreign ministry.

But at the same time, the Turkish media close to the power broadcast - even stage, using drones - the images of these migrants marching towards the borders. It is above all a communication campaign: by informally suspending the migration agreement signed in 2016 with the European Union, or, at least, by giving this image, Ankara's objective is indeed to sow panic in the European capitals to force them to give it "concrete" support in Syria.

Greece steps up border patrols

This is not the first time that the regime of President Erdogan has threatened Europe to open its borders, notes our correspondent in Athens, Joel Bronner. Since September in particular, these rhetorical pressures have multiplied on the part of Ankara, which in particular wishes to obtain more aid from the European Union to cope with the weight of the number of refugees on its soil.

Turkey is today the country that receives the most refugees in the world: 3.7 million Syrians who have arrived since the conflict began in their country in 2011, are indeed officially on Turkish territory.

A border country, Greece has already experienced a resurgence of refugees since last July. Some 40,000 asylum seekers are currently on a handful of islands in the Aegean where popular protest is mounting in the face of overcrowded reception camps.

Faced with this new Turkish threat, apparently more concrete, the Greek authorities therefore quickly announced the strengthening of security at their borders.

The local press reports that the police used tear gas during the day to disperse a group of nearly 500 migrants who were trying to cross the border north of the Evros river.

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• Greece
• Turkey
• International Migration
• Defense
• Syria

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