Turkey winds up border action
FEARS OF CRISIS EASE AS MIGRANTS SENT BACK
>>BRUSSELS: Turkey has signalled that it is winding down its two-week operation to aid the movement of tens of thousands of people toward Europe, following a tough on-the-ground response from Greek border guards and a tepid diplomatic reaction from European politicians.
Migrants at the Greek-Turkish land border began to be transported back to Istanbul by bus last week, witnesses at the border said, de-escalating a standoff that initially set off fears of another European migration crisis. Greek officials said the number of attempted border crossings had dwindled from thousands a day to a few hundred, and none were successful on Friday, even as sporadic exchanges of tear gas with Turkish security forces continued.
Also on Friday, Turkish officials announced that three human smugglers had each been sentenced to 125 years in prison for their roles in the death of a Syrian toddler, Alan Kurdi, whose drowning came to epitomise an earlier migration crisis, in 2015.
That announcement and the week’s other developments were interpreted by experts and politicians as signals to Europe that Turkish authorities were again willing to police their borders and quell the second wave of migration.
It follows a period in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey attempted to engineer the reverse: a new migration crisis on Europe’s borders.
On Feb 28, the Turkish government announced it would no longer stop migrants trying to reach Europe, and it then drove hundreds to the threshold of Greece, live-streaming the process to encourage more to follow.
The move was perceived as an attempt to rally European support for Turkey’s military campaign in northern Syria and more European aid for the 4 million refugees inside Turkey.
On at least one occasion, Turkish officials even forced migrants to leave. In a video clip filmed onboard a bus ferrying people to the border, reluctant migrants were shown being forced off the vehicle at gunpoint by officers in plainclothes and beaten when they resisted.
Marc Pierini, a former European Union envoy to Turkey, called it “the first-ever refugee exodus, albeit a limited one, fully organised by one government against another”.
The border clash not only stirred fears of a new migration crisis, but it also saw both countries react with anger and tough tactics. The Greeks have been condemned for suspending asylum applications and detaining and returning some migrants to Turkey.
To foment a sense of crisis, Turkish security forces fired tear gas over the border at their Greek counterparts and provided journalists with footage of aggressive Greek responses to migrants. Mr Erdogan accused Greek officials of behaving like officials in Nazi Germany.
But the Turks used tactics of their own.
Footage captured by The New York Times showed Turkish security forces standing aside to allow migrants to tear down part of a fence dividing Turkey and Greece. And other footage emerged of a Turkish vessel pursuing a Greek coast guard vessel in the Aegean and of a Turkish armoured vehicle ramming a border fence.
The Turkish Interior Ministry then sent more guards to the border — not to prevent people from leaving, but to stop Greece from returning them by force, according to the Turkish interior minister, Suleyman Soylu.
The confrontation marked a low point in relations between two neighbours who have long had a fragile coexistence within Nato, and it threatened to upend a fine balance in the strategically important, energy-rich southeastern Mediterranean.