EU slams Turkey for ‘weaponizing’ refugees

Pro-Turkish Syrian fighters gather near the Turkish village of Akcakale along the border with Syria on Friday, as they prepare to take part in the Turkish-led assault on northeastern Syria. (AFP)
Updated 12 October 2019
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EU slams Turkey for ‘weaponizing’ refugees

  • Erdogan has threatened to send millions of refugees to Europe if it calls Turkey’s military offensive ‘an invasion’

ANKARA: As the Turkish ground and air offensive in northeastern Syria continues, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to send millions of Syrian refugees to Europe if the EU calls Turkey’s military offensive “an invasion.” “We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” he said on Thursday.
The statement is considered by some a move to “weaponize” the refugees who have been in Turkey since the beginning of Syrian civil war, and to use them as a leverage.
European institutions harshly criticized Turkey’s military operation into northeastern Syria against Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which Turkey considers a terror group.
“Turkey must understand that our main concern is that their actions may lead to another humanitarian catastrophe, which would be unacceptable. Nor will we ever accept that refugees are weaponized and used to blackmail us. That is why I consider yesterday’s threats made by President Erdogan totally out of place,” Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, said on Oct. 11 after his meeting with President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades.
Under heavy artillery and airstrikes, more than 60,000 residents in Syrian towns have reportedly fled their homes since the beginning of the operation.
Ankara says it wants to create a “safe zone” along its border and to help the return of about 1 million Syrian refugees back to their country. However, the project is criticized by some as a move of “demographic re-engineering” that would forcibly settle families and change the social realities of the region.
In the framework of 2016 Turkey-EU refugee deal, the EU allocated about 97 percent of the €6 billion ($6.6 billion) of funding.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned on Friday that Daesh captives could potentially escape from prisons in Syria over Turkey’s incursion amid the chaos.
“Not sure if Ankara can take control of the situation,” he said to the Sputnik news agency.

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60,000 - residents — under heavy artillery and airstrikes — have reportedly fled their homes in Syrian towns since the beginning of the operation.

Western countries have expressed their disapproval of Turkey’s operation. France announced sanctions against Turkey will be “on the table” at next week’s European summit, while Norway and Finland decided on Thursday to suspend their arms exports to Turkey.
US President Donald Trump tweeted on late Thursday: “We have one of three choices: Send in thousands of troops and win militarily, hit Turkey very hard Financially and with Sanctions, or mediate a deal between Turkey and the Kurds!”
According to Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, Erdogan’s statement equals treating Syrian refugees as pawns to be manipulated for political purposes.
Roth thinks that a stated reason for the operation is to force 1 million or more refugees to a zone along the border that Erdogan pretends will be “safe” but has no capacity to secure.
“Then, when others criticize this illegal scheme, he threatens to uproot refugees from the lives they have been building in Turkey and send them off to Europe,” he told Arab News.
Although experts say a threat of such a scale is not particularly credible, it will ring alarm bells in some European countries, especially Greece at the doorstep of the illegal migration route. Turkey hosts 4 million refugees, 3.6 million of them Syrians.


Six migrants drown off Turkiye’s Aegean coast

Updated 3 sec ago
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Six migrants drown off Turkiye’s Aegean coast

The incident took place before dawn just south of the seaside resort of Izmir
“The bodies of six lifeless illegal immigrants were fished out of the water,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X

ISTANBUL: Six migrants drowned while another 27 were rescued by the coast guard when their boat started sinking off the western coast of Turkiye, the interior minister said on Wednesday.
The incident took place before dawn just south of the seaside resort of Izmir in the waters separating the Turkish coast from the Greek island of Samos, which lies just 15 kilometers (nine miles) away.
“The bodies of six lifeless illegal immigrants were fished out of the water,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya wrote on X, adding that the coast guard had rescued 27 others, one of whom was detained on suspicion of smuggling.
Last month, seven migrants drowned in the same stretch of water.
Shipwrecks are very common on the short but perilous route between the Turkish coast and the nearby Greek islands of Samos, Rhodes and Lesbos that serve as entry points to the European Union.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2,333 migrants disappeared or died in the Mediterranean last year.

Sudan battle forces 10,000 families out of famine-hit camp: UN

Updated 19 February 2025
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Sudan battle forces 10,000 families out of famine-hit camp: UN

  • The International Organization for Migration said the violence since February 11 had displaced 10,000 families from Zamzam
  • Beyond the camp, a further “1,544 households were displaced from various villages” near El-Fasher, the IOM said

PORT SUDAN: Two days of fighting between Sudanese rivals have forced an estimated 10,000 families to flee a famine-hit displacement camp in the Darfur region, the UN migration agency said Wednesday.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) last week stormed Zamzam camp, home to at least half a million people, triggering clashes with the Sudanese army and allied militias, witnesses told AFP.
The International Organization for Migration said the violence since February 11 had displaced 10,000 families from Zamzam, just south of North Darfur state capital El-Fasher.
The agency cautioned that its data covers only the first two days of the reported attack as its collection capacity had been reduced due to funding constraints.
Beyond the camp, a further “1,544 households were displaced from various villages” near El-Fasher, the IOM said.
El-Fasher is the only state capital in the vast western region of Darfur that the RSF has not captured in its nearly two-year war with the Sudanese army.
With the military on the verge of retaking the capital Khartoum following a multi-front offensive on central Sudan, the paramilitaries have intensified attacks on El-Fasher in a bid to consolidate their hold on Darfur.
But the RSF has not managed to take the city, its attacks successively repelled by the army-aligned Joint Forces but sending tens of thousands of people fleeing.
Before the most recent attacks, there were already 1.7 million people displaced in North Darfur alone, with two million facing extreme food insecurity, according to the UN.
Established in 2004, Zamzam has received waves of displaced Sudanese during the current war, which began in April 2023.
Some aid officials told AFP the camp’s population has swelled to around one million during the war.
Famine was first declared in Zamzam in August, and has since taken hold of two other displacement camps around El-Fasher.
According to a UN-backed assessment, famine is projected to spread to five more areas of the state including the capital El-Fasher by May.
Across Sudan, the war has killed tens of thousands of people, uprooted over 12 million and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.


Polio still circulating in Gaza, mass vaccination to resume: WHO

Updated 19 February 2025
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Polio still circulating in Gaza, mass vaccination to resume: WHO

  • The UN health agency said no more polio cases had been reported since a 10-month-old child was paralyzed in Gaza last August
  • “The presence of the virus still poses a risk to children with low or no immunity, in Gaza and throughout the region“

GENEVA: The World Health Organization said Wednesday that mass polio vaccination would resume in Gaza on Saturday, targeting nearly 600,000 children, after the virus was again detected in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
The United Nations health agency said no more polio cases had been reported since a 10-month-old child was paralyzed in Gaza last August.
But it said that poliovirus had been found again in wastewater samples taken in the Gaza Strip in December and January, “signalling ongoing circulation in the environment, putting children at risk.”
“The presence of the virus still poses a risk to children with low or no immunity, in Gaza and throughout the region.”
A new campaign would therefore take place from February 22 to 26, with the aim of reaching more than 591,000 children with oral polio vaccines, it said.
The aim was to reach all children under 10, including those previously missed, “to close immunity gaps and end the outbreak,” it said, adding that another vaccination round was planned for April.
Poliovirus, most often spread through sewage and contaminated water, is highly infectious and potentially fatal.
It can cause deformities and paralysis and mainly affects children under the age of five.
After the August case was reported, brief localized pauses in Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza were agreed to allow for two vaccination rounds in the territory in September and October.
Those rounds reached more than 95 percent of the children targeted, WHO said.
But it warned that some areas in the north, including Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, were inaccessible for the second vaccination round.
As a result around 7,000 children had not received their necessary second dose.
The ceasefire in effect since January 19 “means health workers have considerably better access now,” WHO said.
The agency stressed that “pockets of individuals with low or no immunity provide the virus an opportunity to continue spreading and potentially cause disease.”
“The current environment in Gaza, including overcrowding in shelters and severely damaged water, sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure, which facilitates fecal-oral transmission, create ideal conditions for further spread of poliovirus,” it warned.
It warned that the movement of people after the current ceasefire could help spread the virus.
WHO stressed that there are no risks to vaccinating a child more than once.
“Each dose gives additional protection which is needed during an active polio outbreak.”


Egypt says Gaza should be rebuilt without displacing Palestinians

Updated 19 February 2025
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Egypt says Gaza should be rebuilt without displacing Palestinians

  • “We stressed the importance of the international community adopting a plan to reconstruct the Gaza strip without displacing Palestinians,” President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said
  • UNRWA said its operations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank will suffer

DUBAI: Egypt’s president called on the international community on Wednesday to adopt a plan to rebuild war-torn Gaza without displacing Palestinians, after a proposal by US President Donald Trump angered Arabs with his own vision for the enclave.
“We stressed the importance of the international community adopting a plan to reconstruct the Gaza strip without displacing Palestinians — I repeat, without displacing Palestinians from their lands,” President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi told a press conference with Spain’s prime minister in Madrid.
Trump has proposed a plan to redevelop the tiny enclave into an international beach resort after resettling its Palestinian inhabitants. He called on Jordan and Egypt to take in Palestinians.
Egypt and Jordan, along with other Arab states, rejected the plan and said they will work on an alternative to counter Trump’s proposal, but there are no signs they are making serious progress.
El-Sisi added that the UN Palestinian Refugee Agency (UNRWA), which provides aid, health and education services to millions in the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab countries of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, was indispensable for Palestinians.
UNRWA said its operations in the Gaza Strip and West Bank will suffer after an Israeli law banned it in October on Israeli land — including East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognized internationally — and contact with Israeli authorities from Jan. 30.
The United Arab Emirates’ President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told the United States’ secretary of state Marco Rubio on Wednesday that his country rejects a proposal to displace Palestinians from their land, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
The leaders of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the UAE and Qatar are expected to discuss the plan in Riyadh this month before it can be presented to an Arab League summit in Cairo in March.


Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

Updated 19 February 2025
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Suspected Somali pirates seize a new Yemeni fishing boat in second recent attack

  • Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Suspected Somali pirates have seized another Yemeni fishing boat off the Horn of Africa, authorities said.
In a statement late Tuesday, a European naval force known as EUNAVFOR Atalanta said the attack targeted a dhow, a traditional ship that plies the waters of the Mideast, off the town of Eyl in Somalia.
It said the attack Monday remained under investigation. It comes 10 days after another pirate attack on another Yemeni fishing boat which ultimately ended with the pirates fleeing and the mariners on board being recovered unhurt.
Piracy off the Somali coast peaked in 2011 when 237 attacks were reported. Somali piracy in the region at the time cost the world’s economy some $7 billion — with $160 million paid out in ransoms, according to the Oceans Beyond Piracy monitoring group.
The threat was diminished by increased international naval patrols, a strengthening central government in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, and other efforts.
However, Somali pirate attacks have resumed at a greater pace over the last year, in part due to the insecurity caused by Yemen’s Houthi rebels launching their attacks in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
In 2024, there were seven reported incidents off Somalia, according to the International Maritime Bureau.