EU, U.S. pledge support as Syria crisis intensifies
Money to greece and turkey for refugees and migrants only a part of solution, officials say
European Union officials on Tuesday promised more cash for Greece during a visit to its border with northwestern Turkey, which tens of thousands of migrants and refugees have been trying for days to breach, while officials from the United States bolstered support for Turkey on its southern border with Syria.
The EU officials urged Turkey to abide by a 2016 deal which requires it to keep the migrants on its soil in return for EU aid. After an upsurge in fighting in Syria last week, Ankara says it will no longer stop migrants who want to reach Europe.
Greek riot police have used tear gas against the refugees at its border post in Kastanies, about 920 kilometres northeast of Athens, while the coast guard has tried to stop boats transporting migrants to Greece’s Aegean Islands. A Syrian boy died on Monday after his boat capsized in the area.
“The situation at our border is not only an issue for Greece to manage, it is the responsibility of Europe as a whole,” the head of the EU’S executive Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, told a news conference at Kastanies.
“We will hold the line and our unity will prevail,” she said after touring the area with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the heads of the European Council and Parliament.
Von der Leyen announced additional aid of US$ 1.5 billion to help Greece deal with the migrant crisis.
Meanwhile, three top U. S. officials toured Turkey’s southern border with Syria, even briefly crossing into Syrian territory, in a concerted effort to underscore one point: The U. S. is throwing its full support behind its NATO ally in its new fight against the Syrian government and its Russian backers.
As part of the tour, U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft visited a refugee camp and a border crossing, joined by U. S. Ambassador to Turkey David Satterfield and the U. S. envoy to Syria, James Jeffrey.
They all praised their Turkish hosts, lauding what they characterized as Turkey’s hospitality toward Syrian refugees in the country and its seamless co- ordination of cross-border humanitarian assistance.
The two visits come amid rising tensions in Syria’s last rebel bastion, with Turkish- backed rebel groups fighting the Syrian army and its allies’ latest and most serious attempt to retake the northwestern province of Idlib, about 325 km north of Damascus. On Thursday, an airstrike killed 36 Turkish soldiers, and Turkey blamed the Syrian government.
The deaths prompted a sharp response from Turkey, which shot down two Syrian warplanes on Sunday and inflicted heavy losses on the ground against the Russian- backed troops. Turkey shied away, however, from attacking Russian troops or aircraft.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday in Moscow to discuss the Idlib escalation. The non-stop airstrikes by Syrian planes on civilian areas have caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the country since the beginning of its nineyear war. Idlib, long a haven for people displaced from other parts of Syria, is overflowing with more than 3 million inhabitants, many of whom have been displaced multiple times already.
People in this northwestern corner of Syria have nowhere to go: Turkey, struggling to deal with an estimated 3.6 million Syrians living on its territory, has long closed its border to refugees.
In 2015, Turkey was the first stop on the migrant route to Europe, but Turkey closed its borders with Greece the following year after striking a deal with the EU.
Following the deaths of its soldiers last week, and in the absence of assistance by NATO, Turkey announced that it’s reopening its borders with Greece, leading migrants to flood the border.
But Turkey’s border with Syria remains closed.
Brussels is desperate to avoid a repeat of the 201516 crisis, when more than a million migrants entered the EU from Turkey via the Balkans, straining European security and welfare systems and boosting support for farright parties.
Greek troops and riot police remained on high alert along the Turkish border on Tuesday, though there were no reports of significant new clashes with the migrants.
Signs of the crisis surfaced in Cyprus, where a boat carrying 101 Syrian migrants reached the southeastern coast of the eastern Mediterranean island, an EU member state, late Tuesday, Cypriot police said.
By contrast, the border that Turkey shares with EU member Bulgaria, to mainland Greece’s north, was quiet.
The crisis has badly strained relations, never good, between Ankara and Athens.
Greece’s Mitsotakis accused Ankara of deliberately encouraging migrants to head to the border to “promote its geopolitical agenda and divert attention from the situation in Syria.”
He also said these migrants were not fleeing the latest flare- up of fighting in Syria’s Idlib province but were people “who have been living safely in Turkey for a long period of time.” Many speak fluent Turkish, he added.
Turkey faces another possible big influx of migrants as the fighting drags on and says it cannot take in any more.
Craft, the U. S. Ambassador to the UN, praised Turkish efforts in dealing with refugees and pledged US$ 144 million to UN agencies, partly meeting agencies’ request for $ 670 million in emergency aid to deal with the humanitarian crisis brought on by the renewed Idlib offensive.
“Humanitarian aid is only a response,” she said. “The real answer is an immediate ceasefire, a durable ceasefire.”
Jeffrey, the U. S. envoy to Syria, noted that Turkey is a NATO ally. “And the Turks laid out a number of requests of NATO. We’re pressing NATO to be responsive.”
The offensive, Jeffrey said, is bringing about “a degree of human misery we haven’t seen anywhere. This is already the biggest humanitarian crisis, and it’s being deliberately weaponized against Turkey, to push Turkey out of the war and ensure a military victory for ( Syrian President Bashar) Assad.”
The U. S. official disparaged what he described as Russia’s “phoney” ceasefires — the Russian and Turkish leaders have repeatedly struck cessation- of- hostility deals for the Idlib area, only for them to be broken by Syrian ground or aerial attacks.