Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday threatened to let thousands of refugees cross into Europe and warned that Damascus would \u201cpay a price\u201d after dozens of Turkish troops were killed inside Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around 13,000 migrants have gathered along the Turkish-Greek border, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said late Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turkey and Russia meanwhile, who back opposing forces in the Syria conflict, held talks to defuse tensions after an air strike killed the Turkish troops, sparking fears of a broader war and a new migration crisis for Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe will not close those doors\u2026. Why? Because the European Union should keep its promises.\u201dHe was referring to a 2016 deal with the EU to stop refugee flows in exchange for billions of euros in aid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Erdogan\u2019s comments were his first since 34 Turkish troops were killed on Thursday in northern Syria\u2019s Idlib, where Moscow-backed Syrian regime forces are battling to retake the last rebel enclave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There were skirmishes on the Turkish-Greek border at Pazarkule Saturday, as Greek police fired tear gas to push back thousands of migrants who hurled rocks at them, according to an AFP photographer at the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLook who\u2019s lecturing us on international law!\u201d Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted. \u201cThey\u2019re shamelessly throwing tear gas bombs on thousands of innocents piled at their gates.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen expressed concern on the unimpeded flow of migrants from Turkey to the bloc\u2019s external borders in Greece and Bulgaria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe averted more than 4,000 attempts of illegal entrance to our land borders,\u201d government spokesman Stelios Petsas said after the meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A Greek police source said migrants had started fires and opened holes in border fences. Police and soldiers patrolled the Evros River shores a common crossing point and issued loudspeaker warnings not to enter Greek territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Greek coast guard said that from early Friday to early Saturday, 180 migrants reached the islands of Lesbos and Samos, crossing the eastern Aegean from the Turkish coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Turkey\u2019s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday threatened to let thousands of refugees cross into Europe and warned that Damascus would \u201cpay a price\u201d after dozens of Turkish troops were killed inside Syria. Around 13,000 migrants have gathered along the Turkish-Greek border, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said late Saturday. Turkey and Russia meanwhile, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80977,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80976"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80978,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80976\/revisions\/80978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}