Gulnur Aybet, an adviser to President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan, lambasted Brussels over its failure to help Turkey dealing with Syrian refugees and its troops in Idlib as she denied ever helping migrants reach Turkey’s border with Greece last week. Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Ms Aybet said: “There’s a huge humanitarian catastrophe right now. We’re already taking care of four million people and there’s another one and half million people on our border right now from Idlib.
“Our soldiers have recently been murdered and killed in an attempt to stabilise that.
“The EU is not taking any responsibility for any of that humanitarian catastrophe.
“But because we have said people who wish to leave can do so on their free will, we are not sort of transporting them, we are not forcing them to go.
“They’re leaving on their free will. It’s exactly and entirely up to the European Union as to how they want to deal with people who are arriving on their doorstep on their free will.
“It’s absolutely rubbish to be blaming Turkey for this when Turkey has actually done so much for refugees.”
READ MORE: Turkey ‘offer free buses’ for migrants to the Greek border
Greek police fired tear gas to repel hundreds of stone-throwing migrants who tried to force their way across the border from Turkey on Sunday, with thousands more behind them after Ankara relaxed curbs on their movement.
The Greek Government called the confrontations a threat to national security. “Do not attempt to enter Greece illegally – you will be turned back,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Twitter after a security meeting on the situation.
It was the second straight day of clashes at the border crossing near the northeastern Greek town of Kastanies.
Video footage provided by a Greek government source and seen by Reuters also appeared to show tear gas being fired from the Turkish side of the border at the Greek riot police.
“The present situation is an active, serious, severe and asymmetrical threat to the national security of the country,” Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas told reporters.
“These people are being used by Turkey as pawns to exert diplomatic pressure,” he added.
Turkey said on Thursday it would let migrants cross its borders into Europe, despite a commitment to hold them in its territory under a 2016 deal with the European Union.
Turkey’s turnabout came after an airstrike killed 33 Turkish soldiers in its neighbour Syria, and appeared to be an effort to press for more EU support in tackling the refugee crisis from Syria’s civil war.
Ankara has dismissed Greek criticism of its decision to open the border and has condemned Greece’s response to the migrants.
At least 600 people had arrived by sea on the Greek islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos close to the Turkish coast within a few hours on Sunday morning, police said.
Along the northeastern mainland border, some migrants waded across a shallow section of the Evro River to the Greek side.
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Witnesses said there were groups of up to 30, including an Afghan mother with a five-day-old infant, by the side of a road after having forded the river.
The clashes occurred later in the day at the Kastanies crossing after riot police reinforced security there. No further details were immediately available as police were escorting reporters away from the scene, citing safety considerations.
A Greek government source said some migrants had thrown metal bars.
The EU, its relations with Turkey tense over President Tayyip Erdogan’s crackdown on dissent and hydrocarbon drilling off Cyprus, scrambled to respond to the new migrant crisis.
Officials at EU headquarters in Brussels called for emergency meetings of migration and foreign ministers to decide next steps, while EU border agency Frontex said it was in talks with Greece to help it guard the bloc’s external frontier.