Daily Mail - 03.03.2020

Daily Mail, Tuesday, March 3, 2020 QQQ Page 23

march to now here

Tears: A baby cries after arriving on the island of Lesbos

Rejected...

and dejected:

Refugees on

the Turkish

border after a

failed bid to

enter Greece

border with Turkey, where

Frontex – the EU’s border force

• yesterday sent dozens more
  guards as back-up after Athens
  issued a plea for help. She said
  ‘more intensive dialogue’ with
  Ankara will begin in a bid to
  resolve the crisis.
  Turkey already has thousands
  of troops and military vehicles
  in Syria and fighting has esca-
  lated dramatically in recent
  days. Mr Erdogan will meet
  Russian president Vladimir
  Putin, who backs Assad, in
  Moscow on Thursday in a bid
  to broker a ceasefire.
  In response to the new surge
  of migrants, the Greek govern-
  ment is not accepting any new
  asylum applications for a month.
  The measure potentially vio-

lates EU law, which Mrs von der

Leyen will challenge Mr Mitso-

takis over today.

Meanwhile, UK Foreign Sec-

retary Dominic Raab will visit

Turkey to show support for

Ankara’s efforts to negotiate a

lasting ceasefire with Syria.

Mr Raab said: ‘Turkey is on

the frontline of some of the

most difficult and serious chal-

lenges we face with the Syrian

regime and Russian forces con-

tinuing to escalate the violence

on its border.

‘We have been clear in our con-

d e m n a t i o n o f t h e S y r i a n

regime’s actions in Idlib and we

will continue to raise concerns

about its flagrant violations of

international law.’

Comment – Page 16

timebomb, Erdogan is cynically

using his trump card to try to

force Europe (with billions in

f i n a n c i a l a i d ) a n d

Nato (with bombs and bullets) to

back him in his rapidly escalating

conflict with Syria’s president,

Bashar al-Assad.

The horrific war in Syria, with its

use of poison gas and barrel

bombs and its toll of hun-

dreds of thousands of casu-

alties, has put them at each

other’s throats.

One reason is that their

two countries share

500 miles of border,

across which 3.6 mil-

lion refugees have

fled from Syria to

Turkey following

the start of the

c i v i l w a r

in 2012.

Another is Erdogan’s

support for rebel groups fighting

Assad – as a Sunni Muslim, he

is instinctively opposed to Assad’s

Shiite-backed regime.

On top of this, Erdogan loathes

the Kurds – who comprise up to 20

per cent of Turkey’s population

and for decades have demanded

their own state.

He has bombed Kurdish forces

in northern Syria to ensure they

never manage to establish a Kurd-

ish nation on his border.

N

OW, the conflict between

Turkey and Syria threat-

ens to flare into a terrify-

ing all-out war.

Until recently, Erdogan, who has

treacherously cosied up to Rus-

sian president Vladimir Putin

despite being a Nato member, had

been held in check by Putin, who

has never made any secret of his

determination to keep his ally

Assad in power.

In 2017, Russia and Turkey even

signed an agreement to ‘de-esca-

late’ hostilities in four rebel areas

opposed to Assad. One of these

was the province of Idlib in north-

western Syria.

Over the past ten days, however,

all pretence over this agreement

has been abandoned as Russia

allowed Syria to pulverise Idlib,

which is now seen as the one

remaining stronghold against the

Assad regime. Turkish forces,

which have established bases in

the province, have been among

the casualties.

On Thursday night, 34 were

killed in an air strike. Turkey

responded with drone and artil-

lery attacks which killed scores of

Assad fighters and destroyed two

airfields. Yesterday two Syrian jets

were shot down and three Turkish

drones attacked.

As a Nato member, Turkey is

within its rights to call for support

from the organisation. And Amer-

ica is only too happy to see

Erdogan fall out with Putin.

On the other hand the Western

democracies don’t like Erdogan’s

authoritarian ways at home or his

treatment of Kurds. And no one

wants to be dragged into a war –

proxy or otherwise – with a

nuclear-armed Russia.

If Turkey and Russia end up in

conflict, the rest of us in Nato will

face a hard choice: join in or aban-

don an ally to Putin’s mercy.

With so many blood-soaked fin-

gers in the Syrian pie, it is easy to

despair about what to do.

But our frustration at the lack of

decent options is nothing to the

dilemmas facing the three million

civilians in Idlib, huddling in

makeshift refugee camps and

bombed-out buildings.

The grand strategy of Russia

versus the West is no concern to

them – merely naked survival.

They are trapped between a Syr-

ian army pushing them towards

Turkey, and intransigent Turkish

border guards refusing to let

them in. Erdogan says his country

can’t take any more refugees

unless it lets the 3.6 million already

there flee to Europe. And this, he

claims, is why he is sending ‘mil-

lions’ our way.

Even if we in Nato don’t want to

wage war in Syria, the conse -

quences of that war are going to

come to us.

In addition to all the problems of

housing and feeding an unex-

pected wave of millions of refu-

gees, there is the growing danger

of the spread of coronavirus.

If anyone lacks the means to

‘self-isolate’ or just keep their

hands clean, it is refugees. These

poor people have gone for years

without basic public health and

vaccination against known conta-

gious diseases. Now they are

threatened by the new virus, but

so are citizens across Europe if

they flood westwards.

E

RDOGAN is blackmail-

ing the West. He hides

this by using humanitar-

ian language but it is

clear that Turkey is throwing its

weight around.

Some might welcome the Turks

confronting the Assad regime in

Syria, but no one can trust a presi-

dent such as Erdogan who uses

refugees like bargaining chips to

squeeze financial aid out of us.

To put it crudely, we have a

vested interest in stopping a mass

exodus. Western European gov-

ernments have to try to pressure

all the warring groups to accept a

real ceasefire.

Erdogan has said he will head to

Moscow on Thursday ‘to discuss

the developments in Syria’ with

Putin. He says he hopes to ‘find a

solution to this affair’.

Whatever our misgivings about

the man, we must all pray that he

succeeds – not just for our sake in

the West, but in the interests of

common humanity.

Mark Almond is director of the

Crisis Research Institute, Oxford

T

HE threat will have

chilled Europe’s leaders

to the bone. Turkey’s

autocratic president,

Recep Tayyip Erdogan,

announced that his country

would no longer enforce the deal

struck with the EU in 2016 to

prevent millions of Syrian and

other refugees who have poured

into his country from leaving for

Western shores.

‘The doors are now open. Now you

[in Europe] will have to take your

share of the burden,’ he declared.

So far only a few thousands migrants

have amassed on the borders with

Greece and Bulgaria. But Erdogan has

promised millions are on their way,

and Greek border guards are already

saying they cannot cope.

There is now a real possibility that we

could see a European migration crisis

on a larger and more disastrous scale

than that following German Chancellor

Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open

her country’s borders to more than a

million refugees.

It was a decision that unleashed politi-

cal chaos, helped fuel the rise of populist

far-Right parties across Europe, and is

considered by many to be behind Mer-

kel’s protracted political downfall.

By detonating this latest immigration

Commentary

By mark

almond

Turkish

despot’s

cynical

ploy to

detonate

chaos

Threats: Recep Tayyip Erdogan