Tag Archives: Migrant Crisis

For veteran Turkish smuggler, only an army could stop migrant flow

IZMIR, Turkey (Reuters) – Demand has never been higher for the services of Turkish smuggler Dursun, who has taken migrants to Europe for more than decade, and he says nothing short of an army could stamp out his illicit trade.

The EU is counting on Ankara to stem the flow of migrants to Europe after more than a million arrived last year, mainly illegally by sea from Turkey, in the continent’s worst migration crisis since World War Two.

But the task of policing Turkey’s coastline may be beyond its stretched security forces, even with the help of Western allies. NATO sent ships to the Aegean on Thursday to help Turkey and Greece stop criminal networks smuggling migrants.

“Turkey would have to put soldiers on all the beaches,” said the burly Dursun, 30, who has spent three short prison spells in Greece for piloting motor boats full of migrants into Europe. “You have to put thousands of soldiers on the beaches,” he said in the coastal city of Izmir, declining to give his last name.

The Turkish government is under growing pressure from the EU following a $3.3 billion aid deal for the country last year, aimed at slowing the flow of migrants. Thousands died making the crossing in 2015, and the exodus has also strained security and social systems in some EU states and fueled support for anti-foreigner groups.

Ankara has stepped up patrols of its 2,600 km Aegean coast, deploying more coastguard and police and increasing the punishment for the smugglers it catches, especially if their actions led to the deaths of migrants.

While Turkey boasts the second-largest army in the NATO alliance, it is also fighting Kurdish militants in the southeast and has a heavy military presence on its border with Syria where a civil war has raged for five years, the main source of the current refugee crisis.

Namik Kemal Nazli, governor of the Ayvalik district near Izmir, said a big problem facing authorities was the fact that much of the coastline was remote and relatively unpopulated, with many places where smugglers could hide.

“It is hard to control the entire coastline and they are exploiting this,” he said.

DANGEROUS ROUTES

Western diplomats are sympathetic to the difficulties of managing a jagged coast line with plenty of blind spots. But they say Ankara can still do more, both with policing its shores and in tracing criminal gangs. They also say it should do a better job of deterring illegal migrants, especially as some have been caught multiple times trying to make the crossing.

Illegal migrants are usually fingerprinted after being caught. Depending on their nationality, many are released, free to try to reach Europe again.

Turkey, which has taken in more than 2.6 million refugees since the start of the Syrian civil war, says it needs more help from the West. Its Minister for EU Affairs Volkan Bozkir said last week that solving the refugee crisis was not just Turkey’s job, urging European countries to cooperate with Ankara on border controls and information sharing.

Yet the flood of refugees only increases, with more than 80,000 arriving in Europe by boat during the first six weeks of this year – mainly from Turkey to Greece – and more than 400 dying as they tried to cross, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency.

More than 2,000 people a day are now risking their lives to make the journey, UNHCR said last week. The cold winter weather can mean cheaper passage but a more dangerous journey.

Smugglers are taking riskier sea routes to avoid the police crackdown, said Abby Dwommoh of the International Organization of Migration.

“When interdiction measures go up, smugglers and the migrants tend to find ways around them,” she told Reuters. “The numbers are overwhelming for any country to deal with.”

MORE CAUTIOUS

When Dursun started out, there was only a trickle of refugees from Eritrea and Somalia; there were no Syrians and only a few smugglers. Now, the courtyard of a mosque in the rundown neighborhood of Basmane in Izmir where he operates is filled with Syrians trying to make deals with smugglers – just a few blocks from a police station.

Even though police are more vigilant, Dursun said there was nothing they can do unless a smuggler was caught on a beach with a group of refugees. As he spoke, he pointed out other smugglers walking past. Locals say it has become a popular occupation, to which neighborhood drug dealers have switched.

Still, the native of Turkey’s Black Sea coast says he’s become more cautious and no longer captains the boats, despite the lucrative payment of 2,000 euros a trip.

Instead, he brings the migrants and refugees to the setting off points by minibus, coordinating with others in a chain that includes lookouts and those who assemble the groups of refugees.

“If the driver is alone and gets arrested, but nobody saw him transport refugees and there were no refugees in the car, he will be out again straight away,” he said.

Punishments have become much harsher. Recently, two ring leaders were sentenced to 15 and 20 years in jail, he said.

On a recent stormy day, the hotels in Cesme, about an hour’s drive from Izmir, were filled with migrants who were waiting for the weather to break before setting out from Europe.

One hotel manager, who declined to give his name, said even if NATO “shut down the sea” to stop smugglers, that wouldn’t deter migrants from seeking to reach Europe.

“Of course they would look for other ways.”

(Additional reporting by Melih Aslan; Editing by David Dolan and Pravin Char)

Thousands of Iraqi refugees leave Finland voluntarily

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Thousands of Iraqi refugees who arrived in Finland last year have decided to cancel their asylum applications and to return home voluntarily, citing family issues and disappointment with life in the frosty Nordic country.

Europe is in the grip of its worst migrant crisis since World War Two, with more than a million people arriving last year, fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East and beyond.

Germany and Finland’s neighbor Sweden have taken in many of the migrants but Finland too saw the number of asylum seekers increase nearly tenfold in 2015 to 32,500 from 3,600 in 2014.

Almost two thirds of the asylum seekers last year were young Iraqi men, but some are now having second thoughts, so Finland will begin chartering flights to Baghdad from next week to take them home.

Officials said about 4,100 asylum seekers had so far canceled their applications and that number was likely to reach 5,000 in the coming months.

“My baby boy is sick, I need to get back home,” said Alsaedi Hussein, buying a flight back to Baghdad at a small travel agency in Helsinki.

Somalia-born Muhiadin Hassan who runs the travel agency said he was now selling 15 to 20 flights to Baghdad every day.

“It’s been busy here for the past few months,” he said.

A majority of the home-bound migrants have told immigration services they want to return to their families, but some expressed disappointment with life in Finland.

“Some say the conditions in Finland and the lengthy asylum process did not meet their expectations, or what they had been told by the people they paid for their travel,” said Tobias van Treeck, program officer at the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“TOO COLD”

Echoing that comment, travel agent Hassan said: “Some say they don’t like the food here, it’s too cold or they don’t feel welcome in Finland. There are many reasons.”

Nearly 80 percent of the migrants returning home are Iraqis. Just 22 of the 877 Syrians – whose country is racked by civil war – and 35 of the 5,214 Afghans who sought asylum in Finland last year have asked to return to their home country.

Along with other Nordic states, Finland has recently tightened its immigration policies, for example requiring working-age asylum seekers to do some unpaid work.

Hostility to migrants has also increased in Finland, a country with little experience of mass immigration and which now has economic problems.

Germany too, which took in 1.1 million people in 2015, has seen small numbers of Iraqi refugees choosing to go home.

Finland had been preparing to reject up to 20,000 asylum seekers from 2015, but the number of voluntary returnees could significantly reduce that figure.

“The number of returnees is increasing steadily … All asylum seekers are informed about the options for voluntary return and about the available financial assistance,” said Paivi Nerg, a senior official in the Finnish interior ministry.

However, most Iraqi returnees pay for their own flight home or seek help from Iraq’s embassy in Helsinki, she added.

Last year the Finnish government and the IOM provided financial help to 631 returnees and a similar number is expected this year.

The charter flights will carry up to 100 passengers back to Baghdad from Helsinki every week for as long as demand lasts, officials said.

(Editing by Jussi Rosendahl and Gareth Jones)

NATO launches sea mission against migrant traffickers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – NATO ships are on their way to the Aegean Sea to help Turkey and Greece crack down on criminal networks smuggling refugees into Europe, the alliance’s top commander said on Thursday.

Hours after NATO defense ministers agreed to use their maritime force in the eastern Mediterranean to help combat traffickers, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Philip Breedlove said he was working quickly to design the mission.

“We are sailing the ships in the appropriate direction,” Breedlove told a news conference, and the mission plan would be refined during the time they were en route. “That’s about 24 hours,” he said.

The plan, which was first raised only on Monday by Germany and Turkey, took NATO by surprise and is aimed at helping the continent tackle its worst migration crisis since World War Two. More than a million asylum-seekers arrived last year.

Unlike the EU’s maritime mission off the Italian coast, which brings rescued migrants to Europe’s shores, NATO will return migrants to Turkey even if they are picked up in Greek waters.

Britain’s defense minister said that marked a significant change in policy. “They won’t be taken to Greece and that’s a crucial difference,” Michael Fallon told reporters.

NATO will also monitor the Turkey-Syria land border for people-smugglers, said NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg.

Although the plan is still to be detailed by NATO generals, the allies are likely to use the ships to work with Turkish and Greek coastguards and the European Union border agency Frontex.

“There is now a criminal syndicate that is exploiting these poor people and this is an organized smuggling operation,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter told reporters.

“Targeting that is the way that the greatest effect can be had … That is the principal intent of this,” Carter said.

The numbers of people fleeing war and failing states, mainly in the Middle East and North Africa, show little sign of falling, despite winter weather that makes sea crossings even more perilous.

A 3 billion euro ($3.4 billion) deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the flows has yet to have a big impact.

SEEKING SHIPS

Germany said it would take part in the NATO mission along with Greece and Turkey, while the United States, NATO’s most powerful member, said it fully supported the plan.

The alliance’s so-called Standing NATO Maritime Group Two has five ships near Cyprus, led by Germany and with vessels from Canada, Italy, Greece and Turkey. Breedlove said NATO would need allies to contribute to sustain the mission over time.

Denmark is expected to offer a ship, according to a German government source. The Netherlands may also contribute.

“It is important that we now act quickly,” German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen said.

Intelligence gathered about people-smugglers will be handed to Turkish coastguards to allow them to combat the traffickers more effectively, rather than having NATO act directly against the criminals, diplomats said.

Greek and Turkish ships will remain in their respective territorial waters, given sensitivities between the two countries.

NATO and the EU are eager to avoid the impression that the 28-nation military alliance is now tasked to stop refugees or treat them as a threat.

“This is not about stopping or pushing back refugee boats,” Stoltenberg said.

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Brussels and Michele Kambas in Athens,; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Greeks at frontline of migrant crisis angry at Europe’s criticism

ABOARD THE AGIOS EFSTRATIOS, Aegean Sea (Reuters) – Greek Captain Argyris Frangoulis lifts his binoculars and with eyes fixed on the Aegean Sea horizon, steers his patrol boat out near the Turkish border to a dinghy full of stranded refugees.

He zeroes in on the target and gasps – “My God!” – another grey rubber motor boat packed with about four times as many people as it can hold, many of them young children and babies.

“Everybody safe, OK?” he yells at the passengers, mainly Syrians and Afghans, approaching the coast guard vessel bewildered and in near-silence. “Stay calm and do not panic!”

About 50 people are pulled aboard one by one, smiling but too exhausted to speak. By the time they stagger wearily to the boat’s rear, a dinghy is spotted in the distance. Then another, and another, crammed almost entirely with women and children.

By midday, the Agios Efstratios, a gunboat with 29-member crew who work in shifts, had plucked more than 600 people from sea and ferried them to the port of Lesbos, the island on the frontline of Europe’s migration crisis.

From Greece’s islands, the refugees and migrants travel to the mainland and then to the northern border with non-European Union member Macedonia. Most of them are trying to reach Germany.

The influx has led some in the EU to accuse Greece of failing to make use of available EU funds and personnel to ensure people arriving in the Schengen zone of open border travel are documented. Some EU members have suggested Greece should be suspended from Schengen if it does not improve.

But the criticism and threats have been met with anger in Greece. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Wednesday said the EU was “confused and bewildered” by the migrant crisis and said the bloc should take responsibility like Greece has done, despite being crash-strapped.

Most Greeks, including the coast guard, the army, the police were “setting an example of humanity to the world,” Tsipras said.

For those at the frontline, foreign criticism is even more painful.

“We’re giving 150 percent,” said Lieutenant Commander Antonis Sofiadelis, head of coast guard operations on Lesbos.

Once a dinghy enters Greek territorial waters, the coast guard is obliged to rescue it and transport its passengers to the port.

“The sea is not like land. You’re dealing with a boat with 60 people in constant danger. It could sink, they could go overboard,” he said.

RELIEF AFTER EVERY RESCUE

More than a million people, many fleeing war-ravaged countries and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, reached Europe in the past year, most of them arriving in Greece.

For the crews plying a 250-km-long coastline between Lesbos and Turkey, the numbers attempting the crossing are simply too big to handle. It is but a fraction of a coastline thousands of kilometers long between Greece and Turkish shores.

“The flow is unreal,” Sofiadelis said.

Lesbos has long been a stopover for refugees. Locals recall when people fleeing the Iraqi-Kurdish civil war in the mid-1990s swam across from Turkey.

Yet those numbers do not compare to what has become Europe’s biggest migration crisis since World War Two and which has continued unabated despite the winter making the Aegean Sea even more treacherous.

After days of gale force winds and freezing temperatures, more than 2,400 people arrived on Greece’s outlying islands on Monday, nearly double the daily average for February, according to United Nations data.

Sofiadelis, the Lesbos commander, said controls should be stepped up on the Turkish side, while Europe should provide assistance with more boats, more staff and better monitoring systems such as radars and night-vision cameras.

Greek boats, assisted by EU border control agency Frontex, already scan the waters night and day.

By late morning on Monday, Captain Frangoulis and his crew – including a seafaring dog picked up at a port years ago – have been at sea for more than 24 hours.

Each time his crew spot a boat that could be carrying migrants “our stomach is tied up in knots,” Frangoulis said. “There’s this fear that everything must go well, everyone boards safely, no child falls in the sea, no one’s injured.”

Though fewer than 10 nautical miles separate Lesbos from Turkish shores, hundreds of people have drowned trying to make it across.

Patrol boats, as well as local fishermen, have often fished out corpses from the many shipwrecks of the past months, the bodies blackened and bruised from days at sea.

After every rescue operation, a sense of relief fills the crews. Once the Agios Efstratios docked at the Lesbos harbor on Monday, Frangoulis’ beaming crew helped passengers disembark, holding up crying babies in their arms.

“There’s no room for sentimentalism. We execute commands,” Frangoulis said of the rescue operations.

“Beyond commands, we’re human. We’ll lose heart, we’ll cry, we’ll feel sad if something doesn’t go well. There isn’t a person who won’t be moved by this,” he said.

(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

Turkey president chastises U.S. over support for Syrian Kurds

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan upbraided the United States for its support of Syrian Kurdish rebels on Wednesday, saying Washington’s inability to grasp their true nature had turned the region into a “sea of blood”.

Turkey should respond by implementing its own solution, he said, alluding to the creation of a safe zone in northern Syria – something Ankara has long wanted but a proposal that has failed to resonate with the United States and other NATO allies.

His comments, a day after Turkey summoned the U.S. ambassador over its support for Syrian Kurds, displayed Ankara’s growing frustration with Washington, which backs Syrian Kurdish rebels against Islamic State militants in Syria’s civil war.

Compounding tensions, the army said that one Turkish soldier had been killed and another wounded when security forces clashed with Kurdish militants crossing over from Syria.

Ankara regards the Syrian Kurdish PYD group as terrorists, citing their links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade-old insurgency for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

“Are you on our side or the side of the terrorist PYD and PKK organization?” Erdogan said in a speech in Ankara to provincial officials, addressing the United States.

He added that a U.S. failure to understand the essence of the PYD and PKK had caused a “sea of blood” and created a domestic security issue for Turkey.

“On the Syrian problem, which has become a part of our own domestic security, the time has come to implement our proposals for a solution, which everyone finds to be rational and right,” Erdogan said.

Turkey has repeatedly called for a “safe zone” or “no-fly zone” inside Syria. While some Western allies have voiced support in principle, the idea has gained no traction abroad because of concerns that it could bring the West into direct confrontation with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Ankara summoned the U.S. ambassador to drive home its displeasure after State Department spokesman John Kirby said on Monday the United States did not regard the PYD as a terrorist organization.

Another attempt at Syria peace talks last month quickly succumbed to mounting advances against rebels by Assad’s forces backed by Russian air strikes, amid international disunity over how to end the war with global and regional powers supporting opposing sides.

REFUGEE INFLUX

As well as battling both a Kurdish insurgency and Islamic State, which has carried out several deadly bombings in Turkey, Ankara has been grappling with an influx of more than 2.5 million refugees since the 2011 start of Syria’s conflict.

Erdogan said that Turkish spending on food, accommodation and medical care for 280,000 Syrian refugees living in camps had reached $10 billion, while the United Nations had provided just $455 million.

On Tuesday evening, Turkish soldiers spotted seven PKK militants entering Sirnak province’s Cizre district from Syria and, during an ensuing clash, one soldier was killed and one wounded, the armed forces said in a statement.

The area of Syria near where the battle occurred is controlled by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

In a separate incident, a police officer was killed and another wounded when PKK rebels fired rockets at an armored vehicle in the town of Sirnak, state-run Anadolu Agency reported. It was not clear when that attack occurred.

Military sources said the army also seized up to 33 pounds of explosives and four suicide-bomber vests when it detained 34 people trying to cross into Turkey from a swathe of Syria under Islamic State control.

Turkey fears that advances by Syrian Kurds against Islamic State close to its 560-mile border with Syria will fuel separatist ambitions among its own Kurds.

A ceasefire between the PKK and the government collapsed in July following what the government said were attacks on security forces, plunging southeast Turkey into its worst violence since the 1990s and scuppering peace talks.

The PYD and PKK share not only ideology but fighters, with the PKK drawing Syrian Kurdish fighters to its camps in northern Iraq and Turkish Kurds serving in PYD ranks.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Ayla Jean Yackley and Asli Kandemir in Istanbul; Writing by David Dolan and Daren Butler; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Founding members say European Union is in bad shape

ROME (Reuters) – The European Union faces “critical times” and all its members should set aside selfish interests to tackle problems such as immigration and terrorism, the bloc’s six founding nations said on Tuesday.

A week after the EU accepted that some members may never go further in sharing sovereignty, as part of the price for keeping Britain in the club, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg pledged to pursue “ever closer union” at a meeting in Rome, where they founded the bloc in 1957.

“We are concerned about the state of the European project,” the foreign ministers of the Six said in a statement after their talks. “Indeed, it appears to be facing very challenging times. It is in these critical times that we, as founding members, feel particularly called upon.”

The meeting was held against the backdrop of deep division in the 28-nation bloc over how to handle the flows of hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving in Europe fleeing war and failing states in the Middle East and North Africa.

It also came a week after Brussels agreed a draft deal with Britain Prime Minister David Cameron that, among other things, reaffirmed the limitations of a treaty commitment to pursue the “ever closer union” of the peoples of Europe, part of a package to help Cameron campaign before a referendum that the EU’s second biggest economy should continue its 43-year membership.

While acknowledging that the Union “allows for different paths of integration”, the original signatories of the Treaty of Rome declared: “We remain resolved to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the people of Europe.”

Meeting in Italy, which has been in the frontline of a wave of migration to Europe across the Mediterranean, the ministers also stressed the need to overcome divisions on the EU response.

Hungary and Austria this week called for fences on the Macedonian and Bulgarian borders with Greece and between Austria and Slovenia, and several states have called into question the Schengen accord on free circulation inside the EU.

The statement called for better management of the Union’s external borders in order to make them more secure while preserving Schengen and not hampering freedom of movement.

It contained no concrete policy proposals, but said Europe “is successful when we overcome narrow self-interest in the spirit of solidarity”.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer Writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and James Dalgleish)

U.N. fears for hundreds of thousands if Syria troops encircle Aleppo

GENEVA/DAMASCUS/ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of civilians could be cut off from food if Syrian government forces encircle rebel-held parts of Aleppo, the United Nations said on Tuesday, warning of a new exodus of refugees fleeing a Russian-backed assault.

The army aims to secure the border with Turkey and recover control of Aleppo, a senior adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told Reuters, adding that she did not expect diplomacy to succeed while foreign states maintain support for insurgents.

Syrian government forces, backed by Russian air strikes and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, have launched a major offensive in the countryside around Aleppo, which has been divided between government and rebel control for years.

It marks one of the most important shifts of momentum in the five-year civil war that has killed 250,000 people and already driven 11 million from their homes.

Since last week, fighting has already wrecked the first attempt at peace talks for two years and led rebel fighters to speak about losing their northern power base altogether.

The U.N. is worried the government advance could cut off the last link for civilians in rebel-held parts of Aleppo with the main Turkish border crossing, which has long served as the lifeline for insurgent-controlled territory.

“It would leave up to 300,000 people, still residing in the city, cut off from humanitarian aid unless cross-line access could be negotiated,” the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

If government advances around the city continue, it said, “local councils in the city estimate that some 100,000 – 150,000 civilians may flee”. Aleppo was once Syria’s biggest city, home to 2 million people.

Air strikes continued on Tal Rifaat, Anadan and other towns in the Aleppo countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, and activists said, adding that they were almost certainly from Russian planes.

Independent Doctors’ Association official Mahmoud Mustafa said at least two people had been killed and 30 wounded in air strikes near Tal Rifaat and villages near Azaz. The death toll could be higher since his figures referred only to victims brought to the organization’s hospital on the Syrian side of the Oncupinar border crossing with Turkey.

In a residential area of Damascus, a suicide bomber drove his car into a police officers’ club on Tuesday, blowing himself up, a Syrian interior ministry statement said. The state news agency SANA reported three dead and 14 wounded.

The Observatory said eight police officers had been killed and 20 wounded in the blast. Islamic State claimed responsibility.

While mortar and missile attacks have been a common feature of life in Damascus, this was the first bombing of its kind in many months in the center of the capital.

Last month, at least 60 people were killed, including 25 Shi’ite fighters, on the outskirts of the city by a car bomb and two suicide bombers near Syria’s holiest Shi’ite shrine, the Observatory reported. Islamic State also claimed that attack.

“BETWEEN TWO EVILS”

Turkey, already home to 2.5 million Syrians, the world’s biggest refugee population, has so far kept its frontier mostly closed to the latest wave of displaced.

Trucks ferrying aid and building supplies were crossing the border at Oncupinar into Syria on Tuesday, while a few ambulances entered Turkey, sirens blazing.

But the crossing remained closed to the tens of thousands of refugees sheltering in camps on the Syrian side of the border.

“We Syrians will be stuck between two evils if Turkey does not open the doors,” said Khaled, 30, trying to return to Aleppo to rescue his wife and children. “We will have to choose between Russian bombardment or Daesh,” he said, using a pejorative Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The U.N. urged Ankara on Tuesday to open the border and has called on other countries to assist Turkey with aid.

Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban, speaking at her office in Damascus, said the government’s aim was also “to control our borders with Turkey because Turkey is the main source of terrorists, and the main crossing for them”. The Syrian government describes all the groups fighting it as terrorists.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said as many as a million refugees could arrive if the Russian-Syrian campaign continues. Fifty thousand people had reached Turkey’s borders in the latest wave and Ankara was admitting people in a “controlled fashion”, he said.

The U.N. World Food Programme said in a statement it had begun food distribution in the Syrian town of Azaz near the Turkish border for the new wave of displaced people.

“The situation is quite volatile and fluid in northern Aleppo with families on the move seeking safety,” said Jakob Kern, WFP’s country director in Syria.

“We are extremely concerned as access and supply routes from the north to eastern Aleppo city and surrounding areas are now cut off, but we are making every effort to get enough food in place for all those in need, bringing it in through the remaining open border crossing point from Turkey.”

LITTLE HOPE FOR PEACE TALKS

The Russian-backed government assault around Aleppo, as well as advances further south, helped torpedo the first peace talks for nearly two years.

International powers are due to meet on Thursday in Munich in a bid to resurrect the talks, but diplomats hold out virtually no hope for negotiations as long as the offensive continues. Rebels say they will not attend without a halt to the bombing.

Moscow turned the momentum in the war in favor of its ally Assad when it joined the conflict four months ago with a campaign of air strikes against his enemies, many of whom are supported by Arab states, Turkey and the West.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Russia on Tuesday to join efforts to bring about a ceasefire. “Russia’s activities from Aleppo and in the region are making it much more difficult to be able to come to the table and be able to have a serious conversation,” Kerry told reporters.

The Syrian president’s adviser said talk of a ceasefire was coming from states that “do not want an end to terrorism” and were instead seeking to shore up insurgents, who are losing territory on a number of important frontlines.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Beirut, Tom Miles in Geneva, Gergely Szakacs and Marton Dunai in Budapest and Maria Tsvetkova in Moscow; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Giles Elgood, Philippa Fletcher and David Stamp)

Faced with new influx, Turkey’s open door for migrants may be closing

ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – As the number of Syrian refugees now amassing on the Turkish border swells into the tens of thousands, Ankara’s long-standing open door to migrants may be closing.

An assault by Russian-backed Syrian government forces around the city of Aleppo has sent more than 30,000 people fleeing to the Turkish border gate of Oncupinar in the past few days, and officials say tens of thousands more could be on the move.

The surge has created a bitter irony for Turkey.

Praised on the one hand for taking in more than 2.5 million refugees from Syria’s five-year war, it is also under pressure to stop their perilous onward journeys to Europe, and to prevent radical militants from sneaking over what was long a porous border to carry out attacks in Turkey or abroad.

Yet as it tries to keep the gates shut at Oncupinar and provide aid across the border instead, it now finds itself facing calls to let people in.

“We have much wider considerations now … There are terrorist organizations that weren’t there when the Syrian conflict first began,” a senior government official who deals with immigration issues said, explaining how the situation on the border had changed in recent years.

A growing number of refugees just wanted to use Turkey as a staging post to Europe despite the dangers, he said, leaving Ankara with a responsibility to stop incidents like the drowning of a Syrian toddler last September as his family tried to reach the Greek islands, an image which stirred worldwide sympathy.

“Let everyone in and you may see another Aylan Kurdi.”

Turkish aid groups are delivering food and supplies to tent villages on the Syrian side of the border at Oncupinar and the local authorities say there is no need, for now, to open the gates. President Tayyip Erdogan has said that, if necessary, the refugees will ultimately be allowed in.

Ankara has long argued that the only sustainable way to manage the migrant flow is to establish a “safe zone” inside Syria, an internationally protected area where displaced civilians can be given refuge without crossing into Turkey.

The idea has gained little traction with Western leaders, who see battling Islamic State in Syria as the main priority and fear protecting such a zone would put them in direct military confrontation with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

But on a small scale, Turkey is putting it into practice at Oncupinar.

A wounded teenager and his father were let through by foot early on Monday, while a trickle of ambulances ferried the badly injured to hospitals in nearby Turkish towns. But for the majority, the border is firmly closed.

“Unless their lives are in danger, unless there’s an imminent risk, the arrangements on the Syrian side have the capacity to accommodate them,” the government official said.

WAITING TO ENTER TURKEY

In the camps at Bab al-Salama on the Syrian side, where children play in muddy lanes between rows of tents lashed by rain, some are starting to wonder whether they are still welcome in a country they once saw as a guaranteed safe haven.

“I have been here for the past month. I am waiting for Turkey to open the door,” said Dilel Cumali, a woman who fled from Dera’a in Syria’s southwest near the Jordanian border.

“There are no beds, no food, nothing to wear. We had to sleep where it’s wet and there’s nothing to cover ourselves with. There is nothing to feed the kids. We don’t want anything. All we want is to get inside Turkey.”

Under a November deal with the European Union, Turkey agreed to do more to integrate its refugee population – now the world’s largest – and try to lower the number of asylum seekers arriving in Europe after over a million streamed onto the continent in 2015, many by sea from Turkey.

At least 22 migrants drowned after their boat capsized in the Aegean sea off the Turkish coast on Monday, suggesting the exodus shows no sign of abating.

Asked on Saturday about the migrants at Oncupinar, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Turkey had a moral and legal duty to protect refugees, adding EU support to Ankara was aimed at guaranteeing it could cope with them.

FRUSTRATION

Turkey, a NATO member with a 560-mile border with Syria, is increasingly frustrated at the international failure to do more to stop the bombing by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and his allies including Russia, which it sees as the root cause of the migrant flows.

“Those who can’t say stop the bombardment are saying stop the immigration wave. If you’re serious, stop the authors of that cruelty,” said Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan, a long-standing Erdogan advisor.

A suicide bombing in Istanbul last month which killed 10 German tourists, carried out by a Saudi-born Syrian who entered Turkey as a refugee, served only to highlight the risks.

Around Oncupinar, eight camps were set up on the Syrian side for some 60,000 people even before the latest influx, according to Oncupinar governor Suleyman Tapsiz. A ninth is being built.

“There is a perception that Turkey has shut its doors and is not doing anything. On the contrary, there are major efforts to accommodate these people on the Syrian side,” a second Turkish government official said.

“It’s not like we’re shutting our doors in their face.”

A flag of the opposition Free Syrian Army fluttered over the road that leads out from a camp at Bab al-Salama to the Syrian city of Azaz, one of the last towns between the Syrian army’s advance and the Turkish border. Opposition fighters holding Kalashnikovs milled around nearby.

“I fled Assad’s and Russia’s bombardment. Please tell them to open the doors so we can move to safety. We have no safety here,” said Sabah al-Muhammed, an elderly woman who said she had walked for 10 hours to reach the border.

Even amid the chaos of Syria’s war, the message that Europe’s borders were closed had reached her.

“I swear to god, we don’t want to go to Europe, we don’t want Europe. We are Muslim people and we want to live in a Muslim country,” she said.

(Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by David Dolan and Philippa Fletcher)

Russian firepower helps Syrian forces edge toward Turkey border

BEIRUT/ONCUPINAR, Turkey (Reuters) – The Syrian army advanced toward the Turkish border on Monday in a major offensive backed by Russia and Iran that rebels say now threatens the future of their nearly five-year-old insurrection against President Bashar al-Assad.

Iranian backed-militias played a key role on the ground as Russian jets intensified what rebels call a scorched earth policy that has allowed the military back into the strategic northern area for the first time in more than two years.

“Our whole existence is now threatened, not just losing more ground,” said Abdul Rahim al-Najdawi from Liwa al-Tawheed, an insurgent group. “They are advancing and we are pulling back because in the face of such heavy aerial bombing we must minimize our losses.”

The Russian-backed Syrian government advance over recent days amounts to one of the biggest shifts in momentum of the war, helping to torpedo the first peace talks for two years, which collapsed last week before they had begun in earnest.

The Syrian military and its allies were almost three miles from the rebel-held town of Tal Rafaat, which has brought them to around 16 miles from the Turkish border, the rebels, residents and a conflict monitor said.

The assault around the city of Aleppo in northern Syria has prompted tens of thousands to flee toward Turkey, already sheltering more than 2.5 million Syrians.

In the last two days escalating Russian bombardment of towns northwest of Aleppo, Anadan and Haritan, brought several thousand more, according to a resident in the town of Azaz.

Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war with 2 million people, has been divided for years into rebel and government-held sections. The government wants to take full control, which would be its biggest prize yet in a war that has already killed at least 250,000 people and driven 11 million from their homes.

Rebel-held areas in and around Aleppo are still home to 350,000 people, and aid workers have said they could soon fall to the government.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was quoted at the weekend as saying Turkey was under threat, and Ankara has so far kept the border crossing there closed to most refugees.

There are now around 77,000 refugees taking shelter in camps on the Syrian side of the Turkish border, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said on Monday. He said that a worst-case scenario could see as many as 600,000 at Turkey’s border.

After around a week of heavy Russian air strikes, Syrian government troops and their allies broke through rebel defenses to reach two Shi’ite towns in northern Aleppo province on Wednesday, choking opposition supply lines from Turkey.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was “appalled” by the suffering of Aleppo, blaming primarily Russian bombing and suggesting it violated a U.N. Security Council resolution Moscow signed in December.

Kerem Kinik, Vice President of the Turkish Red Crescent, told reporters at the Oncupinar border crossing that Syrians were fleeing Russian strikes in panic. The closure of the road to Aleppo risked a much larger scale repeat of crises in Ghouta, a besieged Damascus suburb, or even Madaya, a blockaded town were residents have starved.

“The route to Aleppo is completely closed and this is a road that was feeding all the main arteries inside Syria. Unless this is reopened, you will see Aleppo falling day by day into a similar situation as in Madaya and Ghouta and you will see a deepening humanitarian crisis,” he said.

“They are hitting any vehicles that are on the move, they are hitting aid trucks,” he added. “We really urge that the Russian attacks on Azaz and Aleppo should stop, because if there is such a policy to clear this area of all human beings… then we may not be able to cope with the influx.”

SUPPLY LINE

The Syrian army’s success in opening a route to the Shi’ite towns of Nubul and Zahraa enabled it to cut a highway that linked rebel held areas in the northern countryside with the eastern part of Aleppo held by insurgents since 2012.

The latest gains by the Syrian government bring it to the closest point to the Turkish border since August 2013, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The capture of the towns of Mayer and then Kafin, just north of Nubul and Zahraa, in the past 24 hrs have opened the road toward Tal Rifaat, the next focus of the army assault. The capture of that would leave only the town of Azaz before the Turkish border itself.

The loss of Azaz, just a few miles from the Bab al Salama border crossing, would virtually wipe out insurgents from one of their main strongholds in northwest Syria, though they still control much of nearby Idlib province.

Russian bombing has for weeks targeted rebel routes to the main border crossing, once a major gateway from Europe and Turkey to the Gulf and Iraq, lately a lifeline for rebel-held areas in Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

The army’s advance has also been indirectly helped by Kurdish-led YPG fighters who control the city of Afrin, southwest of Azaz. They have seized a string of villages in recent days, rebels and the Observatory said.

In a multi-sided civil war that has drawn in global and regional powers, the Kurds are the strongest allies on the ground in Syria of a U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State in eastern Syria and northern Iraq. Turkey supports other rebel groups against Assad and is hostile to the Syrian Kurds, which it sees as allies of its own Kurdish separatists.

Russia joined the war last year with air strikes that it says are aimed at Islamic State, but which Turkey, Arab states and the West say are aimed mostly at other opponents of Assad.

Four months of Russian air strikes have tipped momentum Assad’s way. With Moscow’s help and allies including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, the Syrian army is regaining areas on key fronts in the west.

United Nations investigators called for new sanctions on Syrian officials as well as leaders of the two most hardline rebel groups, Islamic State and the Nusra Front, accusing the three of mass killings, torture and disappearances of civilians in custody.

Speaking in Ankara, Merkel, under fire at home over the refugee crisis, said Europe needed to follow up quickly on pledges of aid to help Turkey cope with the Syria exodus, and also urged Ankara to act fast to improve the situation for refugees.

(Additional reporting by Nick Tattersall in Istanbul, Yesim Dikmen and Ercan Gurses in Ankara and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Suleiman al-Khalidi and Philippa Fletcher; editing by Peter Graff and Pravin Char)

German spy agency says ISIS sending fighters disguised as refugees

BERLIN (Reuters) – Islamic State militants have slipped into Europe disguised as refugees, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) said on Friday, a day after security forces thwarted a potential IS attack in Berlin.

Hans-Georg Maassen said the terrorist attacks in Paris last November had shown that Islamic State was deliberately planting terrorists among the refugees flowing into Europe.

“Then we have repeatedly seen that terrorists … have slipped in camouflaged or disguised as refugees. This is a fact that the security agencies are facing,” Maassen told ZDF television.

“We are trying to recognize and identify whether there are still more IS fighters or terrorists from IS that have slipped in,” he added.

The Berliner Zeitung newspaper cited Maassen on Friday as saying that the BfV had received more than 100 tip-offs that there were Islamic State fighters among the refugees currently staying in Germany.

German fears about an attack have risen since the Paris killings. On Thursday, German forces arrested two men suspected of links to Islamic State militants preparing an attack in the German capital.

Authorities also canceled a friendly international soccer match in Hanover last year and closed stations in Munich at New Year due to security concerns.

Maassen, however, warned against alarm.

“We are in a serious situation and there is a high risk that there could be an attack. But the security agencies, the intelligence services and the police authorities are very alert and our goal is to minimize the risk as best we can,” he said.

(Reporting by Caroline Copley; Editing by Tom Heneghan)