Germany, Turkey at odds on migrants

Berlin and Ankara are at loggerheads over Europe’s refugee crisis, with Germany refusing to take in refugees directly from Turkey unless it does more to curb the number of migrants arriving in Greece.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, told the Bundestag it was “ridiculous” to resettle registered refugees from Turkey while up to 2,000 people a day were still crossing the Aegean Sea to enter EU territory, The Financial Times reported on Thursday.

Turkish officials have been insisting a resettlement scheme — whereby some of the 2m Syrian refugees in Turkey would be transferred to countries across the EU — should not be directly linked to a reduction in irregular migrant flows, insisting they have already done enough to warrant EU assistance.

The mounting tensions came ahead of a meeting in Brussels on Thursday that had been scheduled between Merkel and Ahmet Davutoglu, her Turkish counterpart, on the sidelines of a two-day summit. However, the meeting was cancelled after a bomb exploded in Ankara on Wednesday, killing at least 28 people. Davutoglu cancelled his trip to Brussels.

Although 11 EU member states have agreed in principle to the scheme, member states are divided over how it will work, with some calling for an outright halt in people crossing the Aegean before resettlement can begin while others call for leniency, according to diplomats.

Source: MENA