Teargas and smoke bombs were fired across Turkey’s border with Greece on Saturday in a fresh flare up in tensions over the presence of migrants seeking access to European Union territory.
A Reuters correspondent in the area said the projectiles were coming from Turkish territory and being fired towards Greek police over a high border fence near the Kastanies crossing.
Greek soldiers and riot police have been manning the borderland, as thousands of migrants have made a rush for the frontier in the past days. Their Turkish counterparts have been stationed on the other side.
Turkey said on Feb. 28 that it would let migrants cross its borders into Europe, saying it could no longer contain the hundreds of thousands and the prospect of a fresh influx because of intensified fighting in northwest Syria.
Turkey on Friday accused the European Union of using migrants as political tools and allowing international law to be “trampled”, after EU foreign ministers said they would work to stop illegal migration into the bloc.
The EU on Friday pleaded with migrants on the Turkish border to stop trying to cross into Greece but dangled the prospect of more aid for Ankara as a standoff entered a second week.
This comes as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the Turkish Coastguard to stop allowing immigrants to attempt to cross the Aegean Sea in order to reach EU shores, it was made public on Friday.
The Turkish Coast Guard posted on Twitter that ”Due to the instructions of our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the follow-up of our Minister of Internal Affairs, Süleyman Soylu, illegal immigrants are not allowed to cross the Aegean Sea due to the dangerous sea crossings.”
The Coastguard also said that its units ”are doing much more than usual to prevent crossings from the sea.”
The Turkish officials accused the Greek coast guard of ”pushing back the migrants to the Turkish Sea waters”, something that leaves them ”in a desperate position in the middle of the sea.”
