Syria says two of its jets were shot down by Turkey in Syrian airspace as tensions escalate. The pilots ejected with parachutes.
Migrants arrive at the village of Skala Sikaminias, on the Greek island of Lesbos, after crossing on a dinghy the Aegean sea from Turkey, Sunday, March 1, 2020. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country's borders with Europe were open Saturday, making good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent as thousands of migrants gathered at the frontier with Greece.
While Erdogan did not explicitly linked his decision to open the gates to Europe to the military escalation in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province. However, he has warned that Turkey “can’t handle a new wave of migration,” an apparent reference to Idlib where hundreds of thousands of desperate Syrian civilians fleeing Syrian troop advances moved toward the Turkish border.
Ankara is worried it might come under renewed international pressure to open its now sealed border with Syria and offer refuge to hundreds of thousands more Syrian civilians. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun later said Turkey had changed its focus to preparing for the possibility of new arrivals from Syria “instead of preventing refugees who intend to migrate to Europe.”
Stavros Zamalides, president of the local community in Kastanies, said Turkish soldiers were actively helping people cross the Greek border clandestinely. By midday Sunday, the ministry said initial figures indicated 390 people had arrived since Sunday morning in several boats. The vast majority arrived on the island of Lesbos, with smaller numbers on Chios and Samos. More were believed to be attempting to reach the islands.
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