Historical call from Egemen Bağış to the Greek people

A leading daily of Greece Efimerida Sintakton published an article written by Egemen Bağış on its cover page.

In his article named “A new opportunity for Turkey and Greece: refugees”, Bağış emphasizes that Turkey and Greece are the two countries that are most affected by the refugee crisis comparing to other countries and pointed to the importance of the high-level cooperation council held between Turkey and Greece in Izmir last week. The article summarizes as follows:

“The smooth implementation of the Readmission Protocol between Turkey and Greece are critical for the sake of all European countries and both countries have already developed mechanisms to enhance their cooperation to manage the irregular and illegal migration. Today, Turkey accepts 99 percent of the readmission files presented by Greece. As Turkey readmitted during the first days of March the first group of irregular migrants of around 300 people, more concrete results have to be expected out of effective implementation. Turkey’s intervention rates also increased. Authorities stopped 15 thousand illegal immigrants at sea and on land during the last weeks. Whereas the number of illegal immigrants held backin the first six weeks of the year are above 25 thousand, the number of detained human traffickers reached more than a thousand.The fight against immigrant smugglers also increased. A special unit was set up under the auspices of the Ministry for Interior in order to combat illegal human trafficking and migrant smuggling. Increased penalties for migrant smuggling and an action plan are in preparation. While the European Union needs to implement a more unequivocal resettlement plan, the worsening situation in Syria and an increase in the number of Syrians fleeing away from war exaggerate the difficulty to get a grip on the situation. Despite its fragility the truce in Syria can contribute. However, Turkey and Greece should engage in more cooperation in order to achieve more concrete results. Both countries have to face the terrorist threat and convince other countries together on the fact that the main source of the crisis is the the brutality of the Ashad regime, which needs to be replaced with a more democratic government by the Syrian people without further delay. Only then peace can be achieved and Syrian refugees can return to their homeland. We are having that perfect moment to put aside historical conflicts between Turkey and Greece and reignite that spirit of solidarity and cooperation succeeded during the times of visionary leaders Atatürk and Venizelos.”