ATHENS— Greece said on Friday it had completed a
40km fence on its border with Turkey and a new surveillance system was in place
to stop possible asylum
seekers from trying to reach Europe following the
Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.
اضافة اعلان
Events in Afghanistan have fueled fears in the European
Union of a repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis, when nearly a million people
fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond crossed to Greece from
Turkey before travelling north to wealthier states.
Greece was on the frontline of that crisis and has said its
border forces are on alert to make sure it does not become Europe's gateway
again.
The Afghanistan crisis had created "possibilities for
migrant flows," Citizens' Protection Minister Michalis Chrisochoidis said
after visiting the region of Evros on Friday with the defense minister and the
head of the armed forces.
"We cannot wait, passively, for the possible
impact," Chrisochoidis told reporters. "Our borders will remain safe
and inviolable."
Chrisochoidis said the extension to the existing 12.5km
fence had been completed in recent days, as well as a hi-tech, automated
electronic monitoring system.
Migrant arrivals to Greece, either by land or by sea, have
overall slowed to a trickle since 2016, when the EU agreed a deal with Turkey
to stem the flows in exchange for financial support.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed Afghanistan on the phone on Friday, with Erdogan
saying Afghanistan and Iran — a key route for Afghans into Turkey — should be
supported or a new migration wave was "inevitable," a statement from
his office said.
Greece and Turkey, NATO allies and historic rivals, have
long been at odds over migrant issues and competing territorial claims in the
eastern Mediterranean.
Greece has hardened its migration policy in recent months by
fencing off its migrant camps and launching EU-wide tenders to build two
closed-type facilities on the islands of Samos and Lesbos, close to Turkey.
It has in the recent past stopped people entering its
waters, though it denies widely reported allegations of so-called
"pushbacks."
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