Erdogan-Lukashenko set up new ‘Evro’ at Polish border – EU prepares sanctions on Turkish Airlines

Turkey’s state-owned Turkish Airlines is facing EU sanctions over migrant flights to Belarus. The airline is accused of transporting migrants and others to Minsk, who tried to invade the Polish border on Monday.

In March last year, the same scenes we see on the Polish border unfolded on the border between Greece and Turkey. At that time, the various refugees, immigrants and other elements, received messages on their mobile phones, in order to prepare for … Gardens of Evros. The government chartered special buses even from Adana and Gaziantep’s secret terrorist enclave and even sent as soon as they arrived in Turkey, to the Greek border. Now, Erdogan is reportedly allowing refugees to board planes from Istanbul to Minsk, from where they travel to Poland. People are being used to destabilize EU countries and Europe is continuing with selective vision.

“If Brussels proceeds with sanctions against the airline, this will be the bloc’s first concrete response to Ankara’s continued protection of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko from being held accountable for human rights abuses,” he said. Turkey’s senior program director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a former opposition lawmaker.

“As Erdogan began and continues to use migrants as a weapon against the European Union, long before Lukashenko, the European Union should also consider imposing sanctions not only on airlines involved in human trafficking, but “and to Turkish officials responsible for instrumentalizing immigration,” Erdemir said in his latest article published on the FDD website on Tuesday.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday that the European Union was investigating “how to impose sanctions, including through the blacklist, on third-country airlines involved in human trafficking” by transporting migrants to Belarus. Since June, the Lukashenko regime, apparently with Moscow’s blessing, has used migrants as a lever of pressure against the European Union, dragging them from Africa and the Middle East and then forcing them to cross into its Member States at gunpoint. EU, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

Mr Lukashenko described the immigration crisis as retaliation for a series of EU economic and financial sanctions imposed by Brussels on what Lukashenko described as “serious human rights abuses”. Brussels imposed the harshest sanctions after the incident with the illegal arrest of Roman Protasevic, who was on a boat going from Athens to Lithuania. Belarus forced the plane to land in Minsk to arrest the dissident journalist on board.

In the spring and summer, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rushed to the aid of his “colleague” Lukashenko. The Washington Post reported that Turkey used its veto power within NATO to weaken Lukashenko’s formal condemnation in May. According to Reuters, Ankara has blocked indefinite sanctions backed by Baltic allies and Poland, while also rejecting calls by other NATO members for additional sanctions on Belarus and the release of political prisoners there. Turkey’s obstruction was in line with the role that Erdogan systematically played in the transatlantic alliance.

Although the European Union banned EU airlines from flying over Belarus in June and banned Belarusian airlines from flying over EU territory or landing at EU airports, Turkish Airlines continued to operate regular flights. to Minsk, together with the Syrian Cham Wings and the United Arab Emirates airline FlyDubai. Politico Europe reported that Turkey and the United Arab Emirates were “among the countries believed to be the main points of origin of flights landing in Minsk”. In response to this allegation, Turkish Airlines issued a statement denying any involvement.

On Monday, von der Leyen described the “cynical instrumentalization of immigrants” by the Lukashenko regime as a “hybrid attack”, a form of irregular war combining military and civilian methods. The same day, Polish government spokesman Piotr Müller told reporters that 3,000 to 4,000 migrants were near the border with Belarus and warned of an “escalation… armed nature”. EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ilva Johansson wrote on Twitter: “Our urgent priority is to cut off supplies to Minsk Airport.”

Any punitive action taken by the European Union against Turkish Airlines to prevent the transfer of migrants from Africa and the Middle East to Belarus would strengthen the measures against Minsk proposed by the European Commission on 29 September and adopted by the Council of the European Union. These measures include a partial suspension of the EU-Belarus Visa Facilitation Agreement aimed at officials of the Lukashenko regime.

Petros Kranias