Tag Archives: Turkey

Turkey will take action on border town if it receives no help

Turkish President Erdogan arrives for a conference in Istanbul

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey will take it upon itself to deal with attacks on the border town of Kilis if it receives no outside help, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, in a sign Ankara may be willing to act against Islamic State on its own.

“We will overcome the Islamic State. We will solve that issue ourselves if we don’t receive help to prevent those rockets from hitting Kilis,” Erdogan told an international meeting of ministers in Istanbul.

Kilis, which is just across the border from an Islamic State-controlled area of Syria, has come under frequent rocket fire in recent weeks. Turkish officials say Ankara needs more help from the U.S.-led coalition in protecting its border.

(Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Dolan)

Smugglers made over $5 billion off migrants in 2015

A Turkish Gendarme officer detains a man believed to be a smuggler as Syrian refugees who are prevented from sailing off for the Greek island of Lesbos by dinghies wait in the background near a beach in the western Turkish coastal town of Dikili, Turkey, March 5, 2016.

GENEVA (Reuters) – People smugglers made over $5 billion from the wave of migration into southern Europe last year, a report by international crime-fighting agencies Interpol and Europol said on Tuesday.

Nine out of 10 migrants and refugees entering the European Union in 2015 relied on “facilitation services”, mainly loose networks of criminals along the routes, and the proportion was likely to be even higher this year, the report said.

About 1 million migrants entered the EU in 2015. Most paid 3,000-6,000 euros ($3,400-$6,800), so the average turnover was likely between $5 billion and $6 billion, the report said.

To launder the money and integrate it into the legitimate economy, couriers carried large amounts of cash over borders, and smugglers ran their proceeds through car dealerships, grocery stores, restaurants or transport companies.

The main organizers came from the same countries as the migrants, but often had EU residence permits or passports.

“The basic structure of migrant smuggling networks includes leaders who coordinate activities along a given route, organizers who manage activities locally through personal contacts, and opportunistic low-level facilitators who mostly assist organizers and may assist in recruitment activities,” the report said.

Corrupt officials may let vehicles through border checks or release ships for bribes, as there was so much money in the trafficking trade. About 250 smuggling “hotspots”, often at railway stations, airports or coach stations, had been identified along the routes – 170 inside the EU and 80 outside.

The report’s authors found no evidence of fighting between criminal groups, but larger criminal networks slowly took over smaller opportunistic ones, leading to an oligopoly.

In 2015, the vast majority of migrants made risky boat trips in boats across the Mediterranean from Turkey or Libya, and then traveled on by road. Around 800,000 were still in Libya waiting to travel to the EU, the report said.

But increasing border controls mean air travel is likely to become more attractive, with fraudulent documents rented out to migrants and then taken back by an accompanying facilitator, the report said.

Migrant smuggling routes could be used to smuggle drugs or guns, and there was growing concern that radicalized foreign fighters could also use them to enter the EU, it said.

But there was no concrete data yet to suggest militant groups consistently relied on or cooperated with organized crime groups, it added.

($1 = 0.8837 euros)

(Reporting by Tom Miles)

Anger, fear sweep Turkish border town under attack from Islamic State

Children play inside a devastated house struck by rocket fire from Syria in Turkey's southeastern border town of Kilis

By Humeyra Pamuk

KILIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish shopkeeper Mehmet Baykal knew he had less than 10 seconds to dive under his desk when he heard another rocket being fired from Islamic State-held territory across the border in Syria.

Once a safe haven for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees, this tiny Turkish border town has now become a frontline in its war. So frequent is the rocket fire across what is in effect also NATO’s front line that residents know instinctively how long they have to take cover.

“It feels like a powerful earthquake. The ground shakes with pressure and then it is dust everywhere,” Baykal, 45, who has lived all his life in Kilis, said as he stood on its main shopping street, several of its stores shuttered.

“Kilis never knew what terror was. We opened our homes to those who fled war. But now the war is at our doorstep.”

The town has been hit by rockets from a patch of Syria controlled by Islamic State more than 70 times since January, killing 21 people including children, in what security officials say has gone from accidental spillover to deliberate targeting.

Some houses have been reduced to rubble. Others, their rooms exposed to the open air where walls have collapsed, are still inhabited. Streets are largely deserted and schools are on an informal break as families refuse to send their children.

“I say goodbye to my wife every night before I go to bed, in case I don’t make it to the morning,” said Resul Sezer, whose five-year old granddaughter was killed two weeks ago when a rocket struck the house she was standing outside.

“The talk in the tea house every day is where the rocket might fall today,” he said. “We want the state to do something.”

Turkey, a NATO member, EU aspirant and part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, has stepped up retaliatory fire into northern Syria in recent weeks. But security sources say it is difficult to hit the militants, sometimes firing from the back of vehicles, with the heavy artillery stationed on the border.

Coalition air strikes have increasingly targeted militant positions close to the Turkish border and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last month that U.S. mobile rocket launchers would soon arrive. But so far there has been no concrete sign of the assistance arriving.

In Kilis, frustration with President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party is starting to boil over. Police used tear gas to disperse dozens of residents protesting last month after a rocket attack killed one person and wounded 26.

“Where is the state?” said Omer Ciloglu, an AKP supporter and party member, standing in what was left of his third-floor apartment after the building was hit by a rocket.

“Nobody from the state called me. Nobody told me ‘do not leave your hometown, we are with you’. Instead they say do not gather, do not protest,” he said.

EVEN PRISONERS WANT OUT

Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu say Turkey is taking every necessary measure to secure its border, a promise echoed by Kilis mayor Hasan Kara.

“This is hardly Turkey’s problem alone,” Kara told Reuters in his office in Kilis. “Unless this bog of terrorism is dried up…this problem will continue to hit Kilis but it will also strike other capitals in Europe too,” he said.

Turkey has long pushed for creation of a safe zone in northern Syria but the idea has found little support from Western allies. The United States and Turkey have for months been discussing a military plan to drive Islamic State from the border but there has been little concrete sign of progress.

Earlier in Syria’s war, Turkey, eager to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, faced criticism from Western allies for failing to prevent foreign fighters crossing its border and joining what would become Islamic State. But, as well as the threat to its border, Turkey has been hit by a spate of suicide bombings blamed on the militant group this year.

Erdogan said last week Turkey was making necessary preparations to clear the area across the border from Kilis and that it would not refrain from taking steps on its own if it was unable to get the support it wants from allies.

Lawmakers from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have warned of ‘serious security lapses and breaches of the border’ in Kilis and the surrounding area, calling for the town to be declared part of a ‘terror zone’.

“For the first time, the war is spilling over to Turkey with Kilis coming under attack,” said CHP MP Ozturk Yilmaz, who was abducted by Islamic State with other officials when he was Turkey’s Consul General in the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2014.

“If this continues, we could see Gaziantep, Urfa or other cities going through this with Turkey’s national security seriously at stake.”

Hundreds of Syrians are thought to be among the tens of thousands of people who have fled Kilis over the past few months.

“We already lived through this once and now it’s happening again,” said Mohammed, a 23-year old refugee from Aleppo who is planning to leave to join relatives in the central Turkish city of Konya, far from the border.

(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker in Ankara; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)

EU border agency says migrant arrivals in Greece drop 90 percent

A group of migrants and refugees who stayed in Idomeni makeshift camp walks through a field in attempt to cross the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Evzoni, Greece,

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The number of migrants arriving in Greece dropped 90 percent in April, the European Union border agency said on Friday, a sign that an agreement with Turkey to control traffic between the two countries is working.

The agency, Frontex, said 2,700 people arrived in Greece from Turkey in April, most of them from Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, a 90 percent decline from March.

Under the EU’s agreement with Turkey, all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally across the sea are sent back.

In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and faster progress in EU membership talks.

In Italy, 8,370 migrants arrived through the longer and more dangerous route from northern Africa, Frontex said. Eritreans, Egyptians and Nigerians accounted for the largest share.

There was no sign migrants were shifting from the route to Greece to the central Mediterranean route, Frontex said. The number of people arriving in Italy in April was down 13 percent from March and down by half from April 2015.

That particular statement was contested by the Norwegian Refugee Council, an Oslo-based humanitarian agency. It cited Thursday’s announcement by Italian coastguards that they had helped rescue 801 people, including many Syrians, from two boats heading from Northern Africa to Italy.

“This might be a first sign of Syrian refugees now choosing the much more dangerous route across the Mediterranean from Northern Africa to Italy, in search of protection in Europe,” said Edouard Rodier, Europe director at the council.

“If this continues, the EU-Turkey deal is not only a failure, but may also result in more deaths at sea,” he said in an statement emailed to Reuters.

(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo,; editing by Philip Blenkinsop, Larry King)

Turkish artillery, U.S. -led coalition jets pound Islamic State in Syria

By Humeyra Pamuk

KILIS, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkish artillery pounded Islamic State targets in northern Syria overnight and the U.S.-led coalition carried out air strikes, killing 28 militants near a Turkish border town repeatedly hit by rocket fire, Turkish military sources said.

The artillery strikes near Kilis, north of the Syrian city of Aleppo, started at about 8 p.m. (1700 GMT) and ended in the morning, the sources said. Intelligence reports had suggested the militants were preparing attacks, they said.

The air strikes destroyed a two-storey building used by the militants as a base, along with 11 fortified defensive positions, they said. The Turkish and coalition operations targeted an area about 10 km (6 miles) south of the border.

Turkey’s armed forces have stepped up attacks on Islamic State in Syria in recent weeks after rockets fired by the group repeatedly landed in Kilis, in what appeared to be a sustained and deliberate assault. More than a dozen hit the town last week alone.

Gunfire and occasional blasts from across the border could be heard on Wednesday from a hill in Kilis, which is home to more than 100,000 Syrian refugees.

Abdullah Karasu, a Kilis resident who works in a packaging firm, said he came to the hill every day to watch the action on the other side of the border, partly because it was a safer place to be than in the town center.

“I am not going to work anymore because the office is closed due to the rockets,” he said, standing with his son. Fewer rockets had landed in Turkey over the past three days, perhaps because of the military response, he said.

“But I doubt it’s finished … This silence is ominous. It’s almost as unnerving as the rockets landing,” he told Reuters.

NATO member Turkey was initially a reluctant partner in the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State and faced criticism in the earlier stages of the Syrian war for failing to stop foreign fighters crossing its borders and joining the militant group.

But it has suffered several attacks blamed on the radical militant group, including two suicide bombings in Istanbul this year. Those attacks targeted foreign tourists, killing a total of 16 people, most of them German and Israeli.

President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday that Turkey’s armed forces had killed 3,000 Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, where Turkish soldiers are training local forces to fight the insurgents. He did not give a time frame.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Louise Ireland)

Turkey President Erdogan tells EU, “we’re going our way, you go yours.”

Turkish President Erdogan makes a speech during his meeting with mukhtars at the Presidential Palace in Ankara

By Nick Tattersall and Seda Sezer

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – President Tayyip Erdogan told the European Union on Friday that Turkey would not make changes to its terrorism laws required under a deal to curb migration, and declared: “we’re going our way, you go yours”.

His fiery speech will be a blow to any hope in European capitals that it might be business as usual with Turkey after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who negotiated the migration deal with Europe and had largely delivered on Turkey’s commitments so far, announced he was standing down.

The EU asked member states on Wednesday to grant visa-free travel to Turks in return for Ankara stopping migrants reaching Europe, but said Turkey still had to change some legislation, including bringing its terrorism laws in line with EU standards.

“When Turkey is under attack from terrorist organizations and the powers that support them directly, or indirectly, the EU is telling us to change the law on terrorism,” Erdogan said in a speech at the opening of a local government office in the conservative Istanbul district of Eyup.

“They say ‘I am going to abolish visas and this is the condition.’ I’m sorry, we’re going our way, you go yours. Agree with whoever you can agree,” he said.

Visa-free travel is for many Turks the biggest benefit of Ankara’s deal with the EU. Europe, meanwhile, is counting on Turkey to maintain an agreement that has helped stem the flow of refugees and migrants via Turkish shores, which saw more than a million people reach Greece and Italy last year.

Davutoglu’s departure consolidates the power of Erdogan, who has been highly critical of the EU in the past and who is seen in Brussels as a far tougher negotiating partner less closely wedded in recent years to Turkey’s ambition of joining the EU.

To win visa-free travel, Turkey must still meet five of 72 criteria the EU imposes on all states exempt from visas, one of which is narrowing its legal definition of terrorism.

Rights groups say Turkey has used broad anti-terrorism laws to silence dissent, including detaining journalists and academics critical of the government. But Ankara insists the laws are essential as it battles Kurdish militants at home and the threat from Islamic State in neighboring Syria and Iraq.

Turkey’s EU Minister Volkan Bozkir was earlier quoted by the Daily Sabah newspaper as saying Turkey had already made some changes requested by Europe, including reference to “the concept of immediate and obvious danger that threatens public security”, but that it “does not have the luxury” of making any more.

“NO TURNING BACK”

Erdogan said there would be no gap in Turkey’s governance after Davutoglu’s departure and that the episode demonstrated why the country needs a full presidential system, a matter he said urgently needed to be put to a referendum.

Opponents fear an executive presidency will consolidate too much power in the hands of an authoritarian leader, a sentiment shared by some European leaders who fear his ascent will make relations with Turkey more complicated in the years ahead.

“A new constitution and presidential system are urgent requirements, not Erdogan’s personal agenda … There is no turning back from this point we reached. Everyone should accept that,” he said.

Erdogan bristles at suggestions that Turkey uses its anti-terrorism laws indiscriminately. He has repeatedly stressed his determination to crush Kurdish militants fighting an insurgency in Turkey’s southeast, and is unlikely to sanction Ankara backing down on the European demands.

Much may depend on the ability of whoever replaces Davutoglu, a decision to be made at an extraordinary congress of the ruling AK Party on May 22, to convince European allies that Turkey has already done enough.

Transport Minister Binali Yildirim, a close Erdogan ally, appears to be the president’s current preference, three senior AKP officials said, although they said that could still change.

Government spokesman Numan Kurtulmus and Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag, also Erdogan loyalists, have been touted, as has Energy Minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan’s son-in-law, sources in the party have said.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara, Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Turkey has prevented 85 security incidents since January

Police officers secure the area after an explosion in front of the city's police headquarters in Gaziantep

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey has prevented 85 “major incidents” since January, many involving live bombs, the government’s spokesman said on Monday, a day after the sixth suicide bombing in a Turkish city this year.

“We are making great efforts in the struggle against terror,” Numan Kurtulmus told reporters at a briefing in the capital, Ankara.

“We have prevented 85 major incidents since January. Forty-nine of those included live bombs.”

Turkey has been hit by a series of suicide bombings this year, including two in its largest city Istanbul blamed on Islamic State, and two in the capital Ankara which were claimed by a Kurdish militant group. It has also faced attacks from far leftist groups, mostly on police and security forces.

On Sunday, two police officers were killed and 22 people wounded by a suicide car bomb in the southeastern city of Gaziantep.

Last week, a suicide bomber blew herself up near the main mosque in the northwestern city of Bursa, injuring eight people. The Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, has since claimed responsibility for the attack.

(Reporting by Ercan Gurses; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Andrew Roche)

Nearly 90,000 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in EU in 2015

Two children gather poppies at a field next to a makeshift camp for migrants and refugees at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Some 88,300 unaccompanied minors sought asylum in the European Union in 2015, 13 percent of them children younger than 14, crossing continents without their parents to seek a place of safety, EU data showed on Monday.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa reached Europe last year. While that was roughly double the 2014 figure, the number of unaccompanied minors quadrupled, statistics agency Eurostat said.

Minors made up about a third of the 1.26 million first-time asylum applications filed in the EU last year.

European Union states disagree on how to handle Europe’s worst migration crisis since World War Two and anti-immigrant sentiment has grown, even in countries that traditionally have a generous approach to helping people seeking refuge.

Four in 10 unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Sweden, where some have called for greater checks, suspicious that adults are passing themselves off as children in order to secure protection they might otherwise be denied.

Eurostat’s figures refer specifically to asylum applicants “considered to be unaccompanied minors”, meaning EU states accepted the youngsters’ declared age or established it themselves through age assessment procedures.

More than 90 percent of the minors traveling without a parent or guardian were boys and more than half of them were between 16 and 17 years old. Half were Afghans and the second largest group were Syrians, at 16 percent of the total.

After Sweden, Germany, Hungary and Austria followed as the main destinations for unaccompanied underage asylum seekers.

Seeking to stem the influx of people, the EU has struck a deal with Turkey to stop people crossing from there into the bloc. Turkey hosts some 2.7 million refugees from the conflict in neighboring Syria.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Brawls in Turkish Parliament delay legislation on EU migrant deal

Ruling AK Party and pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers scuffle during a debate at the Parliament in Ankara

By Gulsen Solaker

ANKARA (Reuters) – Brawls between lawmakers from Turkey’s ruling AK Party and the pro-Kurdish opposition have delayed efforts to pass legislation on a migration deal with the European Union, but the country’s EU minister said a deadline next week would still be met.

Deputies threw punches, pushed and tried to restrain each other in the assembly late on Wednesday in a row over military operations targeting Kurdish militants in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast.

The acting speaker announced at the end of Wednesday’s session that, following these scuffles, the parliament would now not meet again in full session until Monday.

Lawmakers had been expected to work on Friday and Saturday on legislation needed for Turks to secure visa-free travel to Europe, a key part of Ankara’s deal with the European Union on stopping uncontrolled migration to Europe.

Brussels aims to propose waiving visas for Turks on May 4 but that is strongly opposed by some EU member states. The EU has said Turkey fully meets fewer than half of the 72 criteria and that its conditions will not be softened.

“If the security surveillance law had been completed last night, as of today Turkey would have done what is required,” EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir told broadcaster NTV.

“The 10 or so remaining articles … will God willing be passed on Monday. But we can effectively say it’s done. After that the 72 expectations are met from our perspective.”

Bozkir said he expected the EU Commission to recommend the lifting of visas for Turks in a report next week.

Under the deal with the EU, Turkey agreed to take back migrants who cross to Greece illegally in return for financial aid, the prospect of accelerated EU accession talks and quicker visa-free travel to Europe for Turks.

The fierce exchanges erupted in parliament after MP Ferhat Encu from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) referred to the killing of civilians in military operations against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.

Thousands of militants and hundreds of security force members and civilians have been killed since the PKK resumed its insurgency in the southeast last summer after a 2-1/2-year ceasefire, shattering a peace process.

While the general assembly was shut, there were scuffles again on Thursday during a meeting of a constitutional commission which was discussing legislation on lifting lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution.

President Tayyip Erdogan accuses the HDP of being an extension of the PKK and has said members of parliament with links to militants should be prosecuted. Around half of some 550 requests to lift deputies’ immunity are aimed at HDP members.

The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies, launched an insurgency in the southeast in 1984 and more than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

(Additional reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Aleppo Death toll mounts; rescue workers killed

Residents and civil defence members inspect a damaged building after an airstrike on the rebel-held Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood of Aleppo

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Attacks by government forces and rebels killed at least 30 people, including eight children, in the last 24 hours in Aleppo, a city seeing some of the worst of a renewed escalation in the Syrian war, a monitoring group said.

Intensified fighting has all but destroyed a partial ceasefire that started at the end of February, with U.N.-led peace talks in disarray.

In Aleppo, divided between areas controlled by the government and by rebels, 19 people were killed by rebel shelling and 11 were killed by government air strikes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

That adds to another 60 people killed over the weekend in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city before the war, according to the Observatory. Air strikes were also reported in rebel-held areas near Damascus and in Hama province on Tuesday.

In a separate incident west of Aleppo, five Civil Defence workers – first responders in opposition-held territory where medical infrastructure has all but broken down – were killed by air strikes and a rocket attack on their centre.

The Observatory and Civil Defence colleagues said the attack appeared to have deliberately targeted the rescue workers in the town of Atareb, some 25 km (15 miles) west of Aleppo.

“The targeting was very precise,” Radi Saad, a Civil Defence worker, told Reuters.

“They were in the centre and ready to respond. When they heard warplanes in the area they did not think they would be the target.” Two people were seriously wounded and ambulances and cars belonging to doctors were destroyed, another Civil Defence member, Ahmad Sheikho, said.

It was unclear whether Syrian or Russian warplanes had launched the raids. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

Each side accuses the other of targeting civilian areas in the five-year-old war that has killed more than 250,000 people.

A Syrian military source said the army would “respond firmly” against rebels attacking government-held parts of Aleppo. State news agency SANA said what it called terrorist groups, including the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, had shelled those neighborhoods.

In the north of Aleppo, insurgents resumed bombardment of a Kurdish-controlled neighborhood, Sheikh Maqsoud, according to the Kurdish YPG militia.

“Civilian areas were shelled at random,” the YPG said.

The YPG and its allies have been battling rebels, including groups backed via Turkey by states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad, for several months near Aleppo and close to the Turkish border.

Rebels accuse the YPG of collaborating with the government in trying to stop people using the only road into opposition-held Aleppo, something the YPG denies.

Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and is concerned at moves by Kurdish forces to expand their control along the Syrian-Turkish border, where they already hold an uninterrupted 400 km (250 mile) stretch.

(Reporting by John Davison; additional reporting by Tom Perry and Marwan Makdesi in Damascus; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)