INTL Europe: Politics, Economics, and Military- February 2020

[Plain Jane]

Slovenia: Ally of Orban Becomes Prime Minister In Melania's Homeland

Anti-mass migration Slovenian Democratic Party leader Janez Jansa, a close ally of Hungary's Prime Vktor Orban, has become Slovenia's new PM.

www.breitbart.com

Slovenia: Ally of Viktor Orban Becomes Prime Minister In Melania’s Homeland
128

Jure Makovec/AFP via Getty ImagesCHRIS TOMLINSON28 Feb 202068
2:20
Anti-mass migration Slovenian Democratic Party leader Janez Jansa, a close ally of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, has been appointed Slovenia’s new prime minister.

The President of Slovenia, Borut Pahor, appointed Jansa as Prime Minister this week following a coalition deal between his party and three other parties in the Slovenian parliament, La Liberté reports.


The appointment of Jansa comes following the collapse of the previous centre-left coalition government under Marjan Sarec, who resigned in January.
Mr Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) had come first in the last national election in 2018 but had not managed to secure enough coalition partners to form a government.
The new government is expected to tighten border controls, reform the country’s asylum policy, and eventually reintroduce six months of mandatory military service.

Breitbart London@BreitbartLondon

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1233306766022193154

View: https://twitter.com/BreitbartLondon/status/1233306766022193154


Erdogan Opens the Gates: Syrian Migrants Granted Unhindered Passage to Europe https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/02/27/erdogan-opens-the-gates-syrian-migrants-granted-unhindered-passage-to-europe/ …

Erdogan Opens the Gates: Syrian Migrants Granted Unhindered Passage to Europe
The Turkish government has announced that for the next 72 hours it will open its border with Syria and allow migrants to go to Europe unhindered.
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The vote to confirm the appointment of Mr Jansa is expected to take place in the Slovenian parliament next week, with a full list of government ministers expected later in March.
The appointment of an anti-mass migration leader comes as the Balkan migration route has begun to see a surge in activity in recent months.
Just under two weeks ago, Bosnian security minister Fahrudin Radoncic warned that as many as 100,000 migrants could be heading from Greece into Western Europe in the coming weeks.
Radoncic added that the border of Bosnia would not be able to handle such a large influx noting that the country did not have the manpower to guard the entire border.
Greece has also warned that up to 100,000 migrants could enter their country from the Middle East by the end of this year.
“The crisis is current and it is serious,” said Manos Logothetis, the Greek government commissioner for the initial reception of refugees.
These warnings have now taken on an even more urgent character, with the Turkish government having reportedly moved to open its border with Syria and permit unhindered passage to Europe — even as coronavirus cases are rising across the Middle East.

Breitbart London@BreitbartLondon

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1177148653401718785

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Slovenia: Citizen Patrols Aid Border Guards in Melania’s Home Country https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/09/26/slovenian-citizen-patrols-aid-law-enforcement-border/ …

Slovenia: Citizen Patrols Aid Border Guards in Melania's Home Country
A citizen-led group has taken to the Slovenian-Croatian border to help bolster the presence of police preventing illegal mass migration.
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Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com

ImmigrationLondon / EuropePoliticsBalkan routeBalkansHungaryJanez JansaMass MigrationMelania TrumpSloveniaViktor Orbán

 

[Plain Jane]

'Europe is nicer': migrants head west after Turkey opens border

Hundreds of migrants in Turkey started arriving on the borders with Greece and Bulgaria on Friday after a senior Turkish official said Ankara would no longer abide by a 2016 EU deal and stop refugees from reaching Europe.

www.reuters.com

NEWS
FEBRUARY 28, 2020 / 1:00 AM / UPDATED 3 HOURS AGO
'Europe is nicer': migrants head west after Turkey opens border

Bulent Usta, Ali Kucukgocmen
4 MIN READ

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of migrants in Turkey started arriving on the borders with Greece and Bulgaria on Friday after a senior Turkish official said Ankara would no longer abide by a 2016 EU deal and stop refugees from reaching Europe.

The migrants, some carrying small children and carrier bags, trekked along roads out of Istanbul and through fields, in scenes reminiscent of the 2015 refugee crisis, when more than a million people fleeing wars and poverty sought asylum in Europe.

Some wore face masks, in an apparent attempt to guard against the coronavirus outbreak now sweeping the world and adding to the concerns of hard-pressed European authorities.


Greece and Bulgaria, both European Union member states, vowed not to admit the migrants. Greek police used smoke grenades at one border crossing, while Bulgaria sent an extra 1,000 troops to its border with Turkey.

“There is no work (here in Turkey),” said Muhammed Abdullah, a 25-year-old Syrian queuing in Istanbul to board a bus bound for the Greek border.

“Turkey is not nice at all, Europe is nicer,” he said, adding that he wanted to go to Germany.

But at the Pazarkule border post with Greece, scores of migrants faced barbed wire fences and smoke grenades. Some stuck in the no-man’s land between the two countries tried to return to the Turkish side to escape the smoke, only to be turned back by the authorities there.

“There are many problems here (in Turkey). We want the Turkish and European governments to open this gate,” said Hamid Muhammed, who was holding a young girl at the Greek border.

Some young men, with nothing else to do, kicked a football around. Women in headscarves wept in desperation.

BY BUS, TAXI AND DINGHY
Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis and Moroccans were among the migrants arriving at the border crossings with Greece and Bulgaria, about 200 km (125 miles) west of Istanbul, Turkey’s pro-government Demiroren news agency said.

“We heard about (Turkey’s decision) on the television,” said migrant Sahin Nebizade, a 16-year-old Afghan, one of a group of migrants packed into one of three taxis that were parked on a highway on the outskirts of Istanbul.

“We’ve been living in Istanbul. We want to go to Edirne and then on to Greece,” he said in fluent Turkish, before the taxis headed for the northwestern province of Edirne.

Further south, on Turkey’s Aegean coast, Turkish broadcasters showed two dozen people, including women and children, aboard a rubber dinghy boat, reportedly bound for the Greek island of Lesbos.


Turkey’s decision to make good on long-standing threats by President Tayyip Erdogan to “open the gates” to Europe came after 33 Turkish troops were killed in an air strike by Syrian government forces in Syria’s northwestern Idlib region.

Some one million civilians have been displaced in Syria near Turkey since December as Russian-backed Syrian government forces seized territory from Turkish-backed Syrian rebels, creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the nine-year war.

Turkey already hosts some 3.7 million Syrian refugees and says it cannot handle any more.

The EU said on Friday it had received no official word from Ankara that it had suspended the 2016 deal, under which Brussels sends billions of euros in aid in return for Turkey stemming the migrant flow to Europe.

Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Gareth Jones
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

 

[Plain Jane]

Greece pushes back migrants after Turkish border 'onslaught'

Greek police fired teargas to push back hundreds of stone-throwing migrants trying to cross the border from Turkey on Saturday, as a crisis over Syria shifted onto the European Union's doorstep.

www.reuters.com

NEWS
FEBRUARY 29, 2020 / 5:26 AM / UPDATED 16 MINUTES AGO
Greek police fire teargas on migrants at border with Turkey

Lefteris Papadimas
3 MIN READ

KASTANIES, Greece (Reuters) - Greek police fired teargas toward migrants who were gathered on its border with Turkey and demanding entry on Saturday, as a crisis over Syria abruptly moved onto the European Union’s doorstep.

Migrants are seen during clashes with Greek police, at the Turkey's Pazarkule border crossing with Greece's Kastanies, in Edirne, Turkey, February 29, 2020. REUTERS/Huseyin Aldemir
The Greek government reiterated its promise to keep migrants out.

“The government will do whatever it takes to protect its borders,” government spokesman Stelios Petsas told reporters, adding that in the past 24 hours Greek authorities had averted attempts by 4,000 people to cross.

Live images from Greece’s Skai TV on the Turkish side of the northern land border at Kastanies showed Greek riot police firing teargas rounds at groups of migrants who were hurling stones and shouting obscenities.

Media were not permitted to approach the Greek side of the border in the early morning, but the area smelled heavily of teargas, a Reuters witness said.

A Turkish government official said late Thursday that Turkey will no longer contain the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers after an air strike on war-ravaged Idlib in Syria killed 33 Turkish soldiers earlier that day.

Almost immediately, convoys of people appeared heading to the Greek land and sea borders on Friday.

An estimated 3,000 people had gathered on the Turkish side of the border at Kastanies, according to a Greek government official. Kastanies lies just over 900 km (550 miles)north-east of Athens.

Greece, which was a primary gateway for hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016, has promised it will keep the migrants out.

However, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that some 18,000 migrants had crossed borders from Turkey into Europe. Speaking in Istanbul, he did not immediately provide evidence for the number, but said it would rise.

Greek police were keeping media about a kilometer away from the Kastanies border crossing, but the broader area, where the two countries are divided by a river, was more permeable.

A group of Afghans with young children waded across fast-moving waters of the Evros river and took refuge in a small chapel. They crossed into Greece on Friday morning.

Today is good” said Shir Agha, 30 in broken English. “Before, Erdogan people, police problem,” he said. Their shoes were caked in mud. It had rained heavily the night before, and by early morning, temperatures were close to freezing.

Greece had already said on Thursday it would tighten border controls to prevent coronavirus reaching its Aegean islands, where thousands of migrants are living in poor conditions.

Nearly a million refugees and migrants crossed from Turkey to Greece’s islands in 2015, setting off a crisis over immigration in Europe, but that route all but closed after the European Union and Ankara agreed to stop the flow in March 2016.

Additional reporting by Ali Kucukgocmen in Istanbul; Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Frances Kerry
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

 

[Plain Jane]

Zerohedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Erdogan: Expect 30,000 Refugees At Europe's Borders Saturday After Turkey 'Opened Gates'

by Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/29/2020 - 10:50
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Despite a 2016 agreement with the EU to stop refugee flows out of Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that 18,000 refugees stood ready along Turkish borders with Europe to pour into the continent.
In his first public comments since Thursday's deaths of 33 Turkish troops in Idlib, likely by a Russian airstrike (though Ankara has preferred to blame Syrian forces), Erdogan said this number will likely climb to as many as 30,000 on Saturday.
Migrants arriving in Greek islands, via EuroNews.
"We are not in a situation to handle a new wave of refugees" from Syria, he said, after previously threatening repeatedly to "open the gates" on the over 3 million Syrian refugees Turkey is hosting.



It looks like he's now making good on this threat, though questions remain over if this is truly the beginning of a 2015 level flood, or a foretaste of what could come:

“We will not close these doors in the coming period and this will continue. Why? The European Union needs to keep its promises. We don’t have to take care of this many refugees, to feed them,” Erdogan said.

He also reiterated and underscored that some 1.5 million refugees were ready to exit war-torn Idlib amid the Syrian-Russian offensive intensifying in the south of the province. Turkey is now in an open war situation with the Syrian Army, claiming to have killed scores of Syrian national troops and paramilitary forces over the last days.

AFP news agency

✔@AFP
https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1233400210191077376
Replying to @AFP

VIDEO:

Migrants arrive on the Greek island of #Lesbos from Turkey, after Turkish officials said Ankara would no longer prevent refugees from going to Europe



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Turkish officials initially announced after Thursday's attack devastated Turkish troops that they would unseal the Turkish-Idlib border for up to 72 hours, allowing refugees transit through Turkish territory and into Europe.
They also had announced that police, coast guard and border security personnel had been ordered to "stand down" starting overnight on Thursday.
Buses were even seen staged in Istanbul to facilitate this. Evidence emerged throughout Friday that Turkish authorities were indeed actively pushing groups of refugees toward Greece, while Greece announced emergency security measures and a military response to block illegal entry, also sealing its main land cross with Turkey at Kastanies to all inbound.

Jenan Moussa

✔@jenanmoussa
https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/1233421159649234949

Another video shows refugees bussed from Istanbul to the border area with Greece.

An eyewitness told me he saw 9 buses leaving.

At one point, it got super crowded and men quarrelled to get a place on the bus. @akhbar



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This has, not for the first time in recent years, left hundreds reportedly stranded at the border crossing between the Turkish and Greek sides, neither side allowing entry.

Jenan Moussa

✔@jenanmoussa
https://twitter.com/jenanmoussa/status/1233406164500652034

Refugees have reached the Turkish Greek border close to #Edirne & now they are stuck there.

They cant go back to Turkey becaue Turkish soldiers are not allowing them.

And they cant move forward because Greece isnt allowing them.

Video via @salam_aldeen1.



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The Turkish side is said to be actively pushing refugees and migrants into the 'no man's land' border crossing area in order to provoke a crisis for the cameras, in a message to the EU, NATO and Washington.

Giorgos Christides@g_christides
https://twitter.com/g_christides/status/1233703706958467073

#Evros now : more than 3.000 migrants and refugees hoping to break through Greek block at Kastanies crossing: for those of us who lived it, the nightmare of #Idomeni has revived. Is it too much to ask from ⁦@EU_Commission⁩ and @Frontex to give Greece a helping hand ?



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Despite Erdogan touting in his speech that 18,000 to up to 30,000 are now en route toward the EU, Greek government officials have confirmed no where near that amount, but is witnessing an initial wave of thousands attempting to enter.

According to Greek daily Ekathimerini:

In Athens, government spokesman Stelios Petsas said that more than 4,000 migrants have been prevented from crossing into Greece from Turkey and there have been 66 arrests.
"Greece was the target of an organized. mass, illegal attempt to violate its borders and has withstood it," Petsas told reprters Saturday after an emergency meeting of ministers at the Prime Minister's office.

Refugee transport bus reportedly organized by Turkey's government out of Aydin in the western part of Turkey.
Ekathimerini newspaper also reported that military commandos and significantly beefed up land and sea patrols had been authorized by Athens.

TRT World

✔@trtworld
https://twitter.com/trtworld/status/1233424737294049281
Replying to @trtworld

Refugees rush to buses in Istanbul headed for Greece as Turkey opens borders



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Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis vowed that "no illegal entries into Greece will be tolerated" - noting greatly tightened security along the EU's external borders.
Meanwhile, NATO and the EU have called on Erdogan to honor Turkish commitments to halt flows of refugees into Europe, obviously to no avail.

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