Briefing: A manufactured refugee crisis at the Greek-Turkish border

Greek riot police patrol along the barbed-wire fence at the Kastanies border checkpoint as asylum seekers gather on the Turkish side on 2 March 2020. (Dimitris Tosidis/Reuters)

MUMBAI

Dramatic scenes have been playing out in recent days at the land and sea borders between Greece and Turkey: Greek police tear-gassing and pushing back crowds of asylum seekers at a northern border crossing; the Hellenic Coast Guard firing warning shots at a dinghy full of asylum seekers in the Aegean Sea; angry protesters preventing another group in a dinghy from disembarking in the port on the island of Lesvos.

The images have been exploited by a savvy Turkish media campaign aimed at maximising pressure on the EU to support Turkish action in northwest Syria and to share more of the burden for hosting refugees. According to refugee advocates and human rights groups, Turkey’s politicisation of the refugee issue and the suffering at the EU’s borders are a predictable outcome of the EU-Turkey deal – a cornerstone of EU efforts to curb irregular migration across its borders.

“This is a broader consequence of the EU-Turkey statement,” Sophie McCann, an advocacy manager for the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), told The New Humanitarian. “We’ve been saying it for four years: it’s never going to work. It’s clearly failed.”