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AT LEAST 13,000 people have been massed at Turkey’s border with Greece after Turkey’s president officially declared its western borders open to migrants and refugees hoping to head to the EU.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to open his country’s borders with Europe made good on a long-standing threat, following an escalation in fighting in Syria which has seen thousands of civilians flee an offensive by government forces.
Erdogan’s announcement marked a dramatic departure from current policy and an apparent attempt to pressure Europe.
The UN’s International Organisation for Migration said that by the previous evening, its staff working along the land border “had observed at least 13,000 people gathered at the formal border crossing points at Pazarkule and Ipsala and multiple informal border crossings, in groups of between several dozen and more than 3,000”.
Greek authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades yesterday to prevent repeated crossing attempts by a crowd of more than 4,000 people massed at the border crossing in Kastanies, and fought a cat-and-mouse game with groups cutting holes in a border fence in a bid to crawl through.
Others were making the short but often perilous sea crossing from the Turkish coast to the Greek islands. At least three dinghies carrying migrants arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos this morning.
Turkey’s decision to open the borders with Greece came amid a military escalation in north-western Syria’s Idlib province that has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians to flee fighting, with many of them heading north toward Turkey.
In Syria, the government said it was closing its airspace for any flights or drones across the country’s north-western region. It said any aircraft that penetrates Syrian airspace will be treated as hostile and shot down.
Drone attacks
The announcement came after two days of Turkish drone attacks in Idlib province that Syrian activists said caused heavy losses to Syrian government forces. These confrontations have added to soaring tensions between Turkey and Russia, which support opposing sides in the Syrian civil war.
“Any jet that violates our airspace will be treated as a hostile target that must be shot down and prevented from achieving its goals,” the Syrian military statement said.
The statement came shortly after the Syrian army shot down a Turkish drone over the town of Saraqeb in Idlib, according to military-run media.
Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar, speaking from military headquarters near the Syrian border, said Turkey aimed to confront Syrian government forces rather than Russian troops. He called on Moscow to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to withdraw to 2018 ceasefire lines on the edges of Idlib.
Referring to losses inflicted on Syria, he said Turkey had “neutralised” more than 2,200 Syrian troops, 103 tanks and eight helicopters.
“The Spring Shield operation, which was launched following the abominable attack in Idlib on February 27, continues successfully,” Akar said, referring to air strikes that killed 33 Turkish soldiers.
The operation is Turkey’s fourth in the war-torn country since 2016.
Meanwhile, Greek deputy defence minister Alkiviadis Stefanis said there were around 9,600 attempts to illegally cross Greece’s border during the night but all were successfully thwarted.
Previously several dozen migrants had managed to make it through.
Greek officials said they arrested 66 migrants on Friday, 17 of whom were jailed for entering the country illegally. All Afghans, they were the first migrants sentenced for illegal entry since 2014.
Yesterday, Greece arrested another 70 people who tried to cross the land border illegally.
The mass displacement in Idlib has raised the possibility that Turkey might come under growing international pressure to open its border with Syria and offer refuge to desperate Syrian civilians. Nearly 950,000 displaced civilians have been pushed toward the Syrian-Turkish border amid the cold winter weather.
Yesterday, Erdogan said Turkey would not stand in the way of refugees and migrants already in the country who hope to head to Europe.
“We will not close the gates to refugees,” he said. “The European Union has to keep its promises. We are not obliged to look after and feed so many refugees.”
Under a €6 billion deal in 2016, Turkey agreed to stem the tide of refugees to Europe in return for financial aid after more than a million people entered Europe in 2015.
It has since accused the EU of failing to honour the agreement. Erdogan has frequently threatened to “open the gates” and allow refugees and migrants to head to Europe unless more international support was provided.
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That’s a shame. Always something I’ve wanted to do and I’ve put my name down on the lottery a good few years now and never made it, some day maybe, though the opportunities to win are getting less for me as the years go by. It’s great to be able to see it via streaming but it’s not the same I’d imagine, bit like watching a game on the TV, it’s good but not the same as being at the real thing. Ah well, I’ll try again for next year.
Ah here, enough already with the COVID
@Mick Hyland: a remanent of Holohan’s reign of terror.
And some want to give a Covid bonus to entire civil service. This lot obviously still not properly back to work.
@John McCann: nowt to do with OPW not being back to work more to do with people gathered in a small chamber 1 person could be covid asymptomatic and potentially infect everyone present same applies to those gathering outside all huddled together to hear anyone speaking etc and someone could be asymptomatic. Chances are it mightn’t happen but can’t risk it either.
Why can’t we risk it? Almost the entire population over 12 is fully vaccinated. What’s the risk of a few fully vaccinated people gathering in essentially an out door space? Night clubs will be open from the end of this month for goodness sake.
We have to treat covid like the flu from here on out. Normality must resume
Surely 1 person could do it. A golden ticket. Charlie and the Newgrange chamber..
I have my eye on a lone standing stone in West Cork. Just over 2m tall but very elongated in cross section, and the long axis points NE-SW, almost exactly into a notch between 2 hills on the SW horizon. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if the Winter Solstice sunset coincided with that notch? Between 18th and 22nd December if there is any clear sunset I’m off to my standing stone to watch the sun go down!
Getting ridiculous now, almost everyone is vaccinated so crack on. Covid is just an excuse now for laziness.
have your say