Turkish police, migrants in standoff near Greek border

Hundreds of refugees barred by Turkish police from continuing their journey to Europe across a land borders with Greece and Bulgaria vowed Wednesday not to budge, despite receiving an ultimatum to leave.

Several hundred refugees spent a second day camped in and around the border city of Edirne in northwestern Turkey where a cordon of police prevented them from leaving the bus station.

Other police barricade the road from Istanbul, preventing another group of migrants from heading west.

The road through Edirne, which lies 10 kilometres (six miles) from the Greek border and 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Bulgarian frontier, is being promoted on social media as a safer route out of Turkey than the perilous journey by sea in overcrowded dinghies.

In the latest tragedy, 22 people who had left Turkey drowned on Tuesday when their wooden boat sank off the Greek island of Kos.

But authorities in Edirne refused to be swayed by their plight, insisting that all migrants would be returned to refugee camps in southern Turkey.
"They cannot stay here. Maybe we will allow them to stay two or three days but then they have to leave," Edirne governor Dursun Ali Sahin told Turkey's NTV channel on Wednesday.

The situation at the station and at the makeshift refugee camp that has sprung up on the edge of the city was calm, with no sign yet of the tensions that have erupted in similar standoffs in Hungary and Macedonia.

Islamic charities were on Wednesday handing out food and water.

- 'No turning back' -

Despite finding their path barred, all the migrants interviewed by AFP vowed to press on to Greece.

Youssef, a 25-year-old engineer, said he had walked for 10 hours to reach Edirne.
"I'll stay here to the end, there is no turning back. I don't even care if I reach Europe or not. I'm here to show the world the suffering we are going through," he said defiantly.

Many of the refugees seeking to leave Turkey have been living in the country for months, sometimes years, after fleeing the bloody civil war in neighbouring Syria.

With virtually no state aid and few jobs available to them in Turkey, which is hosting some two million Syrian refugees -- more than any other country -- many have set their sights on starting over in Europe.

"Economically Turkey cannot take care of Syrian people anymore. So we all need to leave I think," said Hamid, a 25-year-old Syrian political science graduate, who wants to continue his studies at Britain's Oxford University.
Edirne's governor Sahin said his province could not cope with the arrivals, which had exceeded 50,000 so far this year, twice the 2014 tally.

"Last week, we managed to send back 7,500 people by convincing them not to stay. We will use this same persuasion method," he said.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the exodus underscored the need to bring about an end to the war.

"Those people actually want to stay in their homeland. But it has become impossible for them to stay... in the current situation," he said.

"Building walls along borders cannot be the solution to the refugee problem," Erdogan said, in a swipe at Hungary's construction of an anti-immigration border fence, calling for world leaders to put their heads on "how to stop the (Syrian) conflict ... as soon as possible".
Source: AFP