Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Greece should let thousands of migrants who have gathered on its border with Turkey travel on to other European countries.
“Hey Greece: These people aren’t coming to you to stay.
“They are coming to you and going into other European countries.
”Why are you bothered by it? Just open the gates,” Erdogan said at an event in Istanbul on Sunday.
Erdogan also criticised Greece, accusing Turkey’s neighbour of illegally pushing migrants who had made it into the EU back into Turkey, and of “hitting,” “killing” and “torturing” them.
Turkey has accused Greek security officials of shooting two migrants at their shared border over the past week.
Athens denied the reports.
The two sides have been swapping accusations since the migrant crisis was triggered by Ankara’s decision to stop blocking migrants from approaching the Greek border a week ago.
Greece said that it is taking appropriate measures to protect the EU frontier from a surge of illegal crossings and accused Turkey of actively assisting the migrants in their attempts to reach and cross the border.
Turkey said it was taking steps to stem the pushbacks of refugees from Greece on land and in the Aegean Sea.
On Sunday, state-run news agency Anadolu reported that Turkish authorities rescued 121 migrants from boats forced back to Turkish waters by Greek vessels.
The story could not be independently verified.
Also on Sunday, Athens released a night-time surveillance video from its border with Turkey that appeared to show a Turkish military vehicle tearing down the border fence, as tensions between the two countries rise over migrants massed in the region.
The border monitoring vehicle was pulling at a fence after attaching a cable to it, the Greek government said.
Erdogan’s decision to let migrants through the border on the Turkish side spurred Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to declare that the 2016 EU-Turkey migration deal was “dead”.
Under the agreement, Turkey received aid from the European Union to host refugees and keep them away from the Greek land and maritime border, which are also the EU frontier.
The deal sought to curb the immense pace of migrant arrivals to Europe from 2015-16.
Erdogan is set to meet European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels on Monday to discuss the migration agreement, as well as the situation in northern Syria.
The Turkish president has said that the EU has not fulfilled its obligations under the deal and fears a new influx of refugees from Syria.
