At least 13,000 people have been massed at Turkey’s border with Greece after Turkey’s president officially declared its western borders open to migrants and refugees hoping to head to the EU.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to open his country’s borders with Europe made good on a long-standing threat, following an escalation in fighting in Syria which has seen thousands of civilians flee an offensive by government forces.
Mr Erdogan’s announcement marked a dramatic departure from current policy and an apparent attempt to pressure Europe.
The UN’s International Organisation for Migration said on Sunday that by the previous evening, its staff working along the land border “had observed at least 13,000 people gathered at the formal border crossing points at Pazarkule and Ipsala and multiple informal border crossings, in groups of between several dozen and more than 3,000”.
Greek authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades on Saturday to prevent repeated crossing attempts by a crowd of more than 4,000 people massed at the border crossing in Kastanies, and fought a cat-and-mouse game with groups cutting holes in a border fence in a bid to crawl through.
Others were making the short but often perilous sea crossing from the Turkish coast to the Greek islands. At least three dinghies carrying migrants arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos on Sunday morning.
Turkey’s decision to open the borders with Greece came amid a military escalation in north-western Syria’s Idlib province that has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians to flee fighting, with many of them heading north toward Turkey.
