A child has died when a boat carrying refugees sank off the Greek island of Lesbos and another young man has died on the northern border during a clash with Greek police

Turkey says 117,000 refugees have already entered the European Union

AP/DARKO BANDIC - Migrants walk near the border gate of Pazarkule in Edirne, on the Turkish-Greek border, on Monday, March 2, 2020

EFE

Updated: 09/03/20

The Turkish government on Monday raised to 117,677 the number of refugees and migrants who have allegedly crossed into Greece since it announced last Friday that it could no longer hold them, a figure which the Turkish opposition described as "impossible" and which contrasts with the 139 arrests reported on Sunday by the Greek government. "By 13:50 (10:50 GMT), a total of 117,677 migrants had left the country", Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced today regarding the number of crossings recorded since Turkey declared on Friday that it would no longer try to prevent refugees from crossing its border with Greece. If true, that figure would be 17% higher than the number provided by Soylu himself last night.

The data provided by the administration are denied by the main opposition party, the Social Democrat CHP, which governs in Edirne, the city just ten kilometres from the border where thousands of migrants have been gathering. "Regarding the figures given by the Minister of the Interior, we concluded after evaluating them with the mayor of Edirne that they are impossible. At most, a few thousand have crossed the border", CHP deputy Ali Seker told Efe.

Also inconsistent with that estimate are figures provided by the Greek government, which reported yesterday that between Friday and Saturday it had prevented 9,600 people from entering the country via the land border, and that 139 irregular migrants had been arrested.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a partner of the United Nations, some 13,000 people had been scheduled to cross in a strip along the border on Saturday night, some 100 kilometres away. Several thousand people have spent the night in Edirne waiting in the open near the border in order to cross into Greece, caught between the Turkish police who are encouraging them to try and the Greek police who are using force to prevent them from doing so. The Greek police have been using tear gas, water cannons and stun grenades to prevent migrants from entering their territory and thus the European Union.

Several refugees have indicated to Efe that the Turkish police not only encourage and facilitate them to go to the border, but even prevent those who want to return to the cities where they lived from leaving, after checking that the entrance to Greece is closed.

Thousands of migrants and refugees, many Syrian but also Iraqi, Palestinian or Somali, began to approach the border on Friday after Turkey announced on Friday that it is no longer able to prevent them from entering the EU. The Turkish announcement came after 33 of its soldiers were killed in a bombing by Syrian forces in Idlib, the last bastion where Ankara-backed Islamist militias are resisting the Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad. In this way, Ankara hopes to put pressure on the EU to provide more money for the care of the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees living in Turkey, in some cases for years, and to support their military campaign in Syria.

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