“Our first priority is making sure that order is maintained at the Greek external border, which is also a European border,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Greece on Tuesday, thanking the country for being Europe’s “shield.”
“I also want to express my compassion for the migrants that have been lured through false promises into this desperate situation,” she added.
But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that if Europe were serious about resolving the migration problem that has festered since 2015, it would join Ankara in thwarting the offensive led by Russian-backed forces in Syria’s Idlib.
“All other approaches outside of this will move the European Union, which is already wallowing in the mire of xenophobia and racism, a little further from its own values,” he said.
Turkish officials claimed a migrant was killed in a clash with Greek authorities on Wednesday. The Greek government categorically denied the charge, accusing Turkey of dispersing “fake news targeted against Greece.”
Tensions between the E.U. and Turkey have been high in recent days since Ankara announced it would let migrants make their way to the Greek border unimpeded.
Europe has relied on Turkey to stem the flow of migrants and to prevent the reemergence of a crisis that five years ago undermined the political authority of the multistate bloc and spurred the growth of right-wing and nativist movements across the continent.
In March 2016, Brussels signed a deal with Ankara that sought to limit the number of migrants coming into Greece via Turkey — many from war-torn Syria — in exchange for billions of euros in additional aid.
But with the hope of pressuring Europe to get help in Syria, and after the death of 33 Turkish soldier in Idlib, Turkey has let migrants flow west.
Erdogan has claimed that Turkey now faces a spiraling number of people fleeing the Idlib offensive and does not have the capacity to withstand a second wave of refugees.
He has further needled European leaders with language that echoes the appeals of leftists and migrant activists who have long decried what they see as the E.U.’s indifference to human suffering.
At the same time, Von der Leyen has alluded to the idea that Turkey is using migrants as a bargaining chip, saying, “People are not just a means to reach a goal.”
Since Turkey opened its borders, a boy died when a small refugee boat capsized near the Greek island of Lesbos.
The tensions over incoming migrants coincide with rising public anxieties in Europe over the coronavirus and its spread — often in places without any clear connection to the original outbreak in China or its secondary clusters in Iran and northern Italy.
Right-wing nationalists have seized on the virus as an excuse to pursue hard line anti-immigrant policies. The government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announced that it “has indefinitely suspended access to border transit areas for asylum seekers” due to potential risks from the virus.
“We observe a certain link between coronavirus and illegal migrants,” said Gyorgy Bakondi, a national security adviser to Orbán. He did not explain the nature of that “certain link.”
On Wednesday, Orbán announced that Hungary had confirmed its first two cases of coronavirus. Both were students from Iran.