Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has ordered coast guards to prevent migrants from crossing the Aegean Sea, the coast guard service announced on Twitter.
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" On the orders of the president (...) no authorization will be given to migrants to cross the Aegean Sea because of the dangers that this entails, " the service tweeted. " The approach of not intervening to prevent migrants from leaving Turkey remains valid, except for departures by sea, due to the dangers, " he added.
The coast guard said it saved 97 migrants in danger on Thursday, accusing the Greeks of " deflating their three boats and letting them drift, half sinking ".
Ankara and Athens continually exchange accusations concerning migrants, the Turks speaking of the brutality of the Greeks against migrants, the Greeks accusing Turkey of pushing them and even of helping them to emigrate to Greece.
Thousands of migrants have been trying to cross the land border between Turkey and Greece since the Turkish President announced on February 29 that he would stop abiding by the 2016 agreement which provided for migrants to stay in Turkey in exchange for European financial aid to Turkey.
Officially, Ankara protests against the insufficiency of this aid to meet the cost of the four million migrants and refugees, mainly Syrians, which it has welcomed for years.
This cost has increased further with the Syrian regime's offensive since December against the province of Idleb, the last rebel stronghold in Syria, which has caused a humanitarian disaster, with nearly one million people displaced.
The Europeans, who had offered a billion euros of additional aid that Ankara refused, see it as a political blackmail to obtain Western support for Turkish operations in Syria.
