While Joe Biden’s comeback on Super Tuesday and Covid-19 (aka Coronavirus) take up all of the available media space in the United States,1 a serious problem is developing in Syria/Turkey/Greece. As Syria, with Russia’s help, tries to regain the territory around Idlib (the last bit of Syria that the Syrian government doesn’t control), Syrians who have been displaced by the civil war in Syria and who have taken refuge in Idlib province have no place to go except Turkey. But Turkey already has upwards of four million Syrian refugees, and they don’t want any more.
I realize that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government are not nice people and that democracy/freedom is slowly disappearing in Turkey, but it’s hard not to appreciate, at least to some extent, Turkey’s position. Turkey already has millions of Syrian refugees. How many more are they supposed to take? In 2016, after the flood of Middle Eastern and other refugees into Europe, Turkey and the EU entered into an agreement whereby Turkey would limit the number of irregular immigrants and asylum seekers going into Greece and the EU would provide funding to care for the refugees. In other words, the EU has been paying (bribing-?) Turkey to keep Syrian refugees in Turkey, instead of allowing them to pass through to Europe.
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