Greece, Turkey at loggerheads, facing off over migrant crisis on borders

GREEKS and Turks are waging a proxy war on social media with photos, videos and commentary purporting to show the other side behaving badly in a migrant crisis that has seriously strained already tense relations between Athens and Ankara.

An estimated 35 000 migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere have been trying to enter Greece, an EU member state, since Ankara said on February 28 it would no longer keep migrants on its territory as required under a 2016 deal with the EU in return for aid.

Greece has used tear gas and water cannon to hold the migrants back.

On Greek Twitter, the hashtags #GreeceUnderAttack and #GreeceDefendsEurope have become common. On Turkish Twitter KahpeYunan (GreekBitch) was briefly a trending topic. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu used the tag #GreeceAttacksRefugees.

One video circulating yesterday appeared to show a tractor on the Greek side spraying liquid towards the border fence, dousing hundreds of migrants gathered on the Turkish side.

Some Greek social media users speculated it was a farmer spraying pig urine along the border. Turkish social media users said it showed Greek police and farmers spraying chemical weapons and tagged the UN.

The heated online exchanges draw on a long history of conflict between Muslim Turkey and Christian Greece, which today remain at loggerheads over issues such as Cyprus and drilling for gas in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as over migrants.

Turkey, which hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees, says the EU has failed to honour its promises of aid. Brussels and Athens accuse Ankara of goading migrants to storm the border in a bid to “blackmail” Europe into offering more cash and supporting its geopolitical aims in the Syrian conflict.

Photos unverified by Reuters have shown migrants apparently being stripped to their underwear after being caught on the Greek side of the border, and then sent back. Others show Turkish forces allegedly attempting to dismantle parts of the border fence to make it easier for migrants to cross.

Turkey says Greek forces are firing live ammunition and that they killed four migrants last week, claims that Athens denies.

All this comes as Turkey and Russia face off in the Syrian conflict, where Ankara backs anti-government rebels while Moscow is key ally of President Bashar al-Assad.