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The crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border also includes Turkey

By Costas Raptis

The focus of the tension is on the Polish-Belarusian border, where more than 2,000 refugees and migrants are trapped in the dead zone and ten of them have lost their lives. But the “vibrations” spread to a much greater extent.

The fact that Warsaw and nearby Brussels and other European capitals are firing arrows not only at Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, whom he accuses of “tooling” the refugee issue in a “hybrid attack” on his neighbors, but also Moscow as the great protector of the Minsk regime is largely expected in the neo-Cold War context of the day. But the Polish government is also rushing to put Turkey in the “frame”, with which it was very recently considering deepening their defense cooperation.

It is recalled that only in mid-October, Polish Defense Minister Marius Blastak announced in a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Hulusi Akar that the two countries intend to proceed with joint plans for the development of military technology, while in May, during his visit to Constantinople co-signed with Tayyip Erdogan the supply of 24 Turkish Bayraktar TB-2 drones.

All of this suddenly seems to belong to a distant past.

“We see that they are fully synchronized [οι τουρκικές ενέργειες] with Belarus and Poland. “It bothers us and we do not like it,” said Polish Prime Minister Matthew Morawiecki at a special session of his country’s parliament on Wednesday.

“A month ago,” he added, “Turkey has shown that it wants to work closely with us.” But our help in extinguishing the Turkish fires and in promoting the Turkish tourism industry proved to be one-sided graces. We do not like this and we point it out to our Turkish friends “.

The Polish allegations concern the increase of Turkish Airlines flights to Minsk with passengers from Middle Eastern countries, who then try to enter the EU. via Poland.

Already, the German authorities, at German urging, are considering including Turkish Airlines in the companies that will be sanctioned for the current crisis. For his part, the Turkish national airline said in a statement that it “complies with all safety standards and sensitivities in cooperation with international authorities, on all its flights to any part of the world.”

The figures show, however, that Turkish Airlines has reduced its flights from Istanbul to Minsk from 10 to 14 since October 31.

On the other hand, the fact remains that according to EU data. 7,935 people attempted to cross Belarus’ borders with Poland and Lithuania for just 150 in the same period last year.

Morawiecki’s allegations prompted a telephone conversation between Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoλουlu on the same day.

The latter regretted the “unsubstantiated allegations” of the Polish side, which he rejected, and claimed that his country was trying to appear as part of a problem that did not concern it, and called on Poland to send technical teams to Turkey for to ascertain the real situation, so that the international audience is properly informed.

Turkish analysts, such as Metin Corabatir of the Ankara Immigration and Asylum Research Center, who spoke to Al-Monitor, point to the Eurocentric hypocrisy with which the EU seeks to address its management shortcomings and the option of relocating to neighboring countries to address the refugee issue. He characteristically contrasted the 4 million Syrians hosted by Turkey with the practically negligible number of refugees that Poland has received over the years.

In the international press, however, the voices of those who remind that what is accused of what Lukashenko is committing now have already been successfully implemented by Tayyip Erdogan are increasing.

And the measure of “success” is given by the proposal (probably not without irony) made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a joint press conference with his Holy See counterpart Paul Gallagher, for the EU to finance Belarus for to manage refugee arrivals in its territory, just as it has been doing since 2016 with Turkey, on the basis of the Euro-Turkish memorandum.

“We are not paying Turkey. We are supporting the Syrian refugees financially,” said Commissioner-designate Elva Johansson.

At the same time, Vladimir Putin, in a telephone conversation with Lukashenko, expressed concern about the gathering of 12,000 Polish soldiers at the border, citing the refugee crisis.

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Source From: Capital

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