The European border protection agency Frontex expects that a number of illegal immigrants will soon be heading towards Greece again from Turkey, according to Germany's Welt.
This emerges from an internal and confidential situation report from the so-called Frontex Situation Center dated May 5, which Welt got access to.
The report literally states under the heading "Turkey": "The restrictions on Covid-19 have been gradually lifted in most Aegean provinces, but not yet in Dardanellia (Δαρδανέλλια, Turkish: Çanakkale), Constantinople and Smyrna (Σμύρνη, Turkish: İzmir). If freedom of movement is restored in these areas, massive movements of migrants towards the Greek-Turkish border can be expected."
In this context, the report also notes that 262 additional police officers from other regions of Greece have been sent to the Evros border area.
"The planned deployment of another 400 newly trained police officers to the Evros area - as announced by the Greek authorities in early 2020 - has been postponed due to the Covid-19 crisis," the report continues to warn.
In late February and early March this year, thousands of illegal immigrants who came from Turkey had already besieged the Greek-Turkish border and tried to cross the European external border. Chaotic scenes took place with Turkish soldiers shooting at Greek police and they were even caught on camera using vehicles to try and pull down the border fence.
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Turkish authorities picked up the illegal immigrants from the border and brought them back inland in failure.
With Turkey allowing millions of illegal immigrants into their own country to serve as an asymmetric army against Greece, they will be desperate to quickly offload them.
The Turkish economy is in ruins, with the lira reaching an all-time low to the U.S. dollar yesterday, and Turkey’s three largest banks, Garanti, Akbank and İşbank, on the verge of bankruptcy, according to New Economy.
