Turkish President Recep Erdogan, to put pressure on the European Union and achieve his political goals, uses migrants who are in his country.
Nikolai Kaveshnikov, head of the department of integration processes at MGIMO University of the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated this during a press conference in Moscow, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“This is not a refugee crisis, this is a geopolitical decision by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to put pressure on the European Union.
The people who are now trying to storm the Turkish-Greek border are in no way people who fled Idlib. These are Syrians or Afghans who have been living in Turkey for several years, who were advised that now is the time to storm the Greek border, and even some of them were taken there by bus.
But I must say that Greece, and the European Union as a whole, are determined to act much more harshly in order to prevent these people from breaking through the border,” the expert said.
Also, Associate Professor of the Department of European Law at MGIMO University of the Russian Foreign Ministry Nikolai Topornin noted that people who are trying to break into EU territory are illegal migrants, not refugees fleeing war.
“Today we are not talking about the crisis of EU migration policy. Today we are talking about the use by Turkey, and specifically by President Erdogan, for its own political interests and purposes. Of course, the EU is not ready to accept refugees.
Frankly speaking, we are not talking about refugees, but, as they say in Brussels, illegal migrants, these are people who have not left the border areas of Syria, where fighting is taking place, these are people who have long been on Turkish territory in well-known migration camps.
Let me remind you that today, according to UN estimates, about 3,7 million people are concentrated there,” Toporin emphasized.