Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis discussed the movement of migrants from Turkey to EU borders in a phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, hours after Ankara said that it was no longer able to contain the flow of refugees from Syria to Europe as tensions in Syria's Idlib province escalate
ATHENS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th February, 2020) Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis discussed the movement of migrants from Turkey to EU borders in a phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday, hours after Ankara said that it was no longer able to contain the flow of refugees from Syria to Europe as tensions in Syria's Idlib province escalate.
A source in the Greek government said earlier in the day that his country had stepped up efforts to protect its land and maritime border with Turkey in the wake of Ankara's statements.
"During the conversation, the situation in Turkey and the movement of migrants to the Greek border were discussed. Mitsotakis informed the [German] chancellor about the initiatives undertaken by the Greek government," the prime minister's press office said in a statement.
Under a Turkey-EU deal signed in 2016 to regulate the migrant flow to Europe, illegal migrants arriving on Greek islands must be returned to Turkey, and the EU agreed to accept one Syrian refugee for every returned migrant. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly accused Europe of not doing enough to provide aid and resettlement for EU-bound migrants. Notably, Merkel has been an advocate of the so-called open-door policy, welcoming hundreds of thousands of migrants to Germany.
Mitsotakis added that following the recent military developments in Idlib, Athens was in constant contact with the European Union and NATO.
The Turkish authorities said on Friday that 33 Turkish servicemen were killed in an airstrike conducted by Syria's government forces in the northwestern Idlib province late on Thursday. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Syrian troops attacked terrorists in the de-escalation zone in Idlib as they were planning to carry out a large-scale attack on Syrian military positions. The Turkish soldiers, who were among the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham members (previously known as Nusra Front terrorist organization, banned in Russia) for an unknown reason, came under fire in the area near the settlement of Behun. Turkey engaged in consultations with NATO amid the tensions in Syria.
On February 4, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Turkey had failed to comply with some major commitments within the Russia-Turkey memorandum on Syria's Idlib, including its inability to distinguish between the armed opposition and terrorists. The commitments outlined in the deal included maintaining the status quo for the Turkish military's presence in the Idlib de-escalation zone under the condition that all terrorist groups withdrew from the area before October 15, 2018. The document also stipulated holding joint Russian-Turkish patrols in the area and the adoption of effective measures to ensure an end to hostilities in Idlib.
