Ankara Blast Sinks EU Refugee Deal With Turkey

2/19/2016 9:18:32 AM

(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pulled out of talks on migrants scheduled for Thursday in Brussels after a car bomb in the Turkish capital Ankara killed 28 people.

Austria had summoned European leaders to meet in Brussels where they hoped to persuade Turkey to agree to a deal by which EU states would accept a limited number of refugees if Turkey took back migrants rejected by European states.

The urgent quest for a solution is triggered by fears that the spring of this year will see a new surge of arrivals from Middle Eastern war zones as European countries still search for a unified approach to the crisis.

EU member states have meanwhile been implementing their own solutions to the crisis - often including razor-wire fences.

Several European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel hoped to close the deal with Ankara before an EU leaders' summit on Thursday.

Media outlets in the Balkans are speculating about the EU's next moves regarding the refugee crisis.

The EU is allegedly ready to shut the door entirely to refugees from March 1 the Belgrade daily Danas reported quoting unnamed sources in the European Commission.

In initial stage of the new plan EU is set to close the gate to refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan and later turn back people fleeing from Syria.

On Wednesday Croatia returned some 200 migrants to Serbia prompting Belgrade to react by saying it "would no longer accept people turned back from EU states into its territory".

The possibility that Europe might close its borders fully to migrants has angered Greece where Migration Minister Yannis Mouzalas has warned that this could trigger a "major humanitarian crisis" in his country and not stop the influx of migrants.

He told German business daily Handelsblatt that the only way to stop refugees coming to Europe was to end Syria's civil war.

The Greek minister reacted after Austria announced a set of new rules aimed at limiting the number of asylum seekers from last year's 90000 people to 37500 in 2016.

Athens fears the newly announced cap will cause bottlenecks along the Balkan migration route.

Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.