Top Turkish official warns Europe of new wave of Syrian migrants
Top Turkish official warns Europe of new wave of Syrian migrants
By Arthur Lyons 6 February 2020
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Europe could see a brand new wave of migrants if it fails to listen to Ankara’s warnings about the looming humanitarian crisis taking shape in Syria’s northwest Idlib province, a top spokesman for the Turkish government said on Tuesday.
The comments follow a period that saw the relentless bombardment of Idlib by Russian-backed Syrian government forces which caused around 40,000 civilians to flee their homes to move towards Syrian’s border with Turkey, Greek newspaper Ekathimerini reports.
Eight people in the Turkish military have also been killed during the bombardment of Syria’s northwest province.
“If Turkey’s warnings are not taken into consideration, we warn everyone that a refugee exodus will affect Europe to a large extent,” Ömer Çelik, the spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, told Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency on Tuesday.
As of right now, Turkey maintains 12 outposts in the areas immediately surrounding Idlib that were labeled as de-escalation zones in a deal struck between Moscow and Ankara in September of 2018. Since last April, however, the deal collapsed as Assad and his Russian backers began bombarding Idlib once more, asserting that Turkey had failed to hold up their end of the deal by permitting extremist groups to control the area.
Turkey has taken in approximately 3.7 million Syrians since the bloody conflict began back in 2011. Despite having promised to stem the flow of migrants into the European Union in 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to “open the gates” to allow the 3.7 million migrants to flood into Europe if the EU fails to provide more assistant to Turkey.
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