APExplains: A day after a deadly Syrian airstrike on Turkish troops, hundreds of refugees and migrants in Turkey have begun heading for the country’s land and sea borders with Greece. Who are the refugees or migrants there?
Migrants arrive with a dinghy accompanied by a Frontex vessel at the village of Skala Sikaminias, on the Greek island of Lesbos, after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey, on Friday, Feb. 28, 2020. An air strike by Syrian government forces killed scores of Turkish soldiers in northeast Syria, a Turkish official said Friday, marking the largest death toll for Turkey in a single day since it first intervened in Syria in 2016.
Apart from the Syrian refugees registered in Turkey, the country has also been a staging ground and transit point for many people from the Middle East, North Africa and central Asia hoping to head to Europe. Its coastline’s proximity to Greek islands, and the country’s land border with EU member Greece, have made it one of the preferred routes into the EU for those fleeing war and poverty at home.
The following month, furious at EU countries describing his military incursion into northern Syria as an invasion, Erdogan again threatened to let Syrian refugees flood Europe. “You should revise your stance toward Turkey, which at the moment holds so many IS members in prison and at the same time controls those in Syria,” he said. “These gates will open and these IS members who have started to be sent to you will continue to be sent. Then you can take care of your own problem.”On Friday, a day after the airstrike that killed Turkish troops in Syria, Turkey appeared to be ready to make good on its threat to open the gates.
“Some asylum-seekers and migrants in our country, worried about developments, have begun to move toward our western borders,” he said. “If the situation worsens, this risk will continue to increase.” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke by phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the situation and the increased flows of people towards Greece’s borders, which are also the EU’s external borders.
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