Encouraged by the #Crossingnomore social media campaign, which calls for migrants to be allowed to travel overland to Europe rather than risk their lives at sea, around 2,000 refugees flocked to the city last week.
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“These provinces will not be Edirne or Kirklareli – near the border“, the governor added.
Rights groups estimate 70 people drowned in global waters between Greece & Turkey in September.
The Greek coastguard rescued another 13 people and was looking for other survivors, the agency said.
A shorter and less risky sea route exists from Turkey to Greece.
“If neighboring countries let them in, Turkey would let them pass [through] the country“, Hürriyet Daily News quotes him as telling journalists while visiting the central province of Aksaray. Michael Diedring, the secretary general of the European Council for Refugees and Exiles, a union of 87 European non-governmental organisations, said: “EU states need to stop doing what they are now doing, which is making decisions for their own benefit”.
“If they send us back to Syria we will die”. Problems are compounded in cases where the father is absent or has been killed because discriminatory Syrian laws prevent mothers passing their nationality to their children.
Turkey has taken in more than two million Syrians since the start of the war under an open-door policy that is a source of pride for many Turks, especially given the rough treatment they see being meted out to migrants in some European countries.
The ENS is calling on all countries in Europe to close loopholes so that any child born on their territory can acquire nationality if they would otherwise be stateless.
The disintegration of the former Yugoslavia created similar problems particularly for members of the Roma community, many of whom continue to face obstacles in acquiring nationality.
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In a week of bloodshed, skirmishes, disappointment and utter confusion for the throngs of people trudging through the Balkans and Eastern Europe, trying to flee war and turmoil in the Middle East, the stalemate in Edirne has been one more hot spot in a continent full of them. Germany has over 9,000 children and teenagers of “unknown nationality”.
