Migration agreement between Turkey and EU is dead – Greek PM
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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered the Turkish coastguard to prevent migrants from crossing the Aegean sea because of the risks, state media reported.
A Turkish jurists group has slammed the EU for violating the rights of asylum seekers flocking to the Turkish-Greek border. “EU countries announced that they support Greece’s human rights violations under the pretext of protecting its borders,” Necati Ceylan, head of Turkey’s International Jurist Union, said in a statement late Friday.
Anadolu news agency reports that asylum seekers flocking to the Turkish-Greek borders caused great panic in the governments of European Union countries, he said. “The United States and EU countries stress the possibility of asylum seekers coming to their countries and affecting their economic well-being, so they do not see asylum seekers as people,” he said. This proves that the EU talk of values and human rights is empty, he argued.
On Saturday tensions flared on the Greek-Turkey border where tear gas and smoke bombs were fired at thousands of migrants amassed at a makeshift camp waiting to cross into Europe, France 24 reports.
Meanwhile Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told CNN in an interview late on Friday, that landmark agreement signed between Turkey and the European Union in 2016 to curb irregular migration into the bloc via Greece has collapsed because of Ankara’s tactics.
“Right now, let’s be honest, the agreement is dead,” Mitsotakis said. “And it’s dead because Turkey has decided to completely violate the agreement because of what happened in Syria.”
Mitsotakis referred to “a conscious attempt by Turkey to use migrants and refugees as geopolitical pawns tio promote its own interests,” saying that people crossing into Greece are not from Syria but have been living in Turkey for a long time and are being assisted by Turkish authorities.
“They have systematically assisted, both at land and at sea, people in their effort to cross into Greece,” said Mitsotakis. “Europe is not going to be blackmailed over this problem by Turkey.”
