Page 22 Daily Mail, Tuesday, March 3, 2020
march to now here
Blackmail row rages
between Turkey and
EU as human pawns
are turned away
from Greek border
By David Churchill
Desperate: Guards move in as a migrant tries to cut the border fence in north-east Greece
Armed: A
Greek
soldier on
the borderis an invasion,’ Greek
development minis-
ter Adonis Georgi-
adis said.
More than 10,000
r e f u g e e s a n d
migrants,
mainly from
S y r i a a n d
other Middle
Eastern countries,
remained at Greece’s
border yesterday after
arriving over the weekend.
Holding white flags, they called
on soldiers to let them in.
The Turkish government is
said to have shuttled thou-
sands of them from Istanbul to
the border by bus to ratchet
up pressure on EU leaders.
Many began returning yes-
terday after realising they
had been duped by the Turk-ish authorities, who also report-
edly told them the Greek bor-
der was open.
M r E r d o g a n’ s p r o v o c a t i v e
actions were sparked by the kill-
ing of dozens of Turkish troops in
an air strike in north-west Syria
last week. He is appealing for mil-
itary and air support from Nato
and European allies to assist in
his conflict with Syrian leader
Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
But the Turkish premier’s call
has fallen on deaf ears, prompting
him to deliver on threats to throw
open Turkey’s borders.
Mrs Merkel said: ‘I understand
that Turkey is facing a very big
challenge. Still... it’s unacceptable
that he – President Erdogan and
his government – are not express-
ing this dissatisfaction in a dia-logue with us as the European
Union, but rather on the back of
the refugees. For me, that’s not
the way to go forward.’
EU officials said Ankara must
‘honour its obligations and com-
mitments’ under the 2016 migra-tion.’ Guy Verhofstadt, a senior
European Parliament MEP and
former Belgian PM, accused Tur-
key of using its ability to control
migration flows to ‘blackmail’
EU leaders. He tweeted: ‘We have
to stand by Greece and fight
together Erdogan’s blackmail.’
Earlier, Mr Erdogan boasted
about receiving ‘multiple calls’
from EU figures urging him to
stick to the EU-Turkey migration
pact. He said: ‘After we opened
the doors, there were multiple
calls saying “close the doors”. I
told them it’s done. It’s finished.
The doors are now open. Now,
you will have to take your share
of the burden.’
Mrs von der Leyen will today
hold crisis talks with Greek PM
Kyriakos Mitsotakis and visit itsA WAR of words broke out between
the EU and Turkey yesterday as
the bloc’s new migrant crisis
claimed its first life.
Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan
declared the ‘doors open’ for up to 4 mil-
lion refugees to pour into neighbouring
Greece and Bulgaria, insisting European
Union leaders must take their ‘share of
the burden’.
But Brussels hit back, accusing Turkey of
wilfully breaking a treaty under which it
receives billions of pounds of EU money in
return for stemming migration flows.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
accused Mr Erdogan of trying to strong-
arm EU leaders into giving him military
support for his conflict with Syria ‘on the
back of the refugees’.
As the row intensified yesterday, a refugee
child drowned after a boat capsized off the
island of Lesbos, Greek officials said, while
a man was reported to have been shot dead
by guards on the Greece-Turkey border.
After the vessel capsized, 46 people were
rescued and two children were taken to
hospital, one of whom could not be revived.
Lesbos is already overrun with arrivals
and houses Europe’s largest refugee
camp, which holds 19,000 people. It
was designed to hold 3,000. ‘This‘Take your share
of the burden’tion pact, under which it has
received more than £5 billion.
European Commission presi-
d e n t U r s u l a v o n d e r L e y e n
added: ‘I acknowledge that Tur-
key is in a difficult situation con-
c e r n i n g t h e r e f u g e e s a n d
migrants, but what we see now
cannot be an answer or a solu-