"Can you tell me if tomorrow there will still be buses?" Asks a Syrian, half worried, half happy, two plastic bags in his hand. "I used to go there to shop, I don't have all my stuff with me, I'm not ready," he explains, scanning the other side of the road. On this arcade of Istanbul are parked two coaches, succeeding those which left this Friday morning for the city of Edirne, last step before the Greek border.
In other words: the gates of Europe, which Ankara announced the sudden opening on Thursday night, after the attack attributed to the Syrian regime which killed 33 Turkish soldiers in Idlib. In this pocket, in the north-west of Syria, the last rebels - jihadists in particular - directly confront each other, supported by armored vehicles and infantrymen of the Turkish army on one side, and, on the other side, the troops loyal to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, supported by the Russian air force, who bombarded without distinguishing too much between combatants and civilians.
The goal of Assad and his "godfather" Vladimir Putin, through this final offensive, is to regain total control of the country, nine years after the start of the civil war in 2011. Meanwhile, while 900,000 refugees have already fled the combat zones, towards the Turkish border, the international community is powerless. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel have appealed to Putin and Erdogan for a summit of appeasement, in vain for the moment, because of the refusal of the master of the Kremlin.
Images dreaded by the EU
Faced with this standstill, Turkey has decided to execute the catastrophic scenario that makes Europe nightmarish: that of a massive influx of refugees. "The Idlib crisis has exceeded all limits," presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Friday. That is why the international community must end the humanitarian crisis and take concrete action. ”
Turkey is counting on EU financial support to build the border security zone, where it ultimately wants to relocate two of the 3.6 million Syrians on its soil. Above all, it needs the EU and NATO, of which it is a member, to obtain the establishment of a “no-fly-zone” - no-fly zone - in order to stop the aerial bombardment of fighters and helicopters. Russian.
The Turkish strategy, embodied by the swarm of journalists climbing up to the buses - not always full - to collect the images feared by the EU, has spread like hope through the messaging screens of the refugees who face to an increasingly severe rejection in Turkey. "I received the information and I came to see for myself if it was not a lie," says Serife, a Syrian woman, whose meager income from the households she makes do not allow her to support herself. his four children correctly. We will go to Germany, to Canada ... What does it matter! We have to go ".