Turkey won't take back migrants already on Greek islands

The aim, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and European Union leaders have said, is to discourage illegal migrants and break the business model of human smugglers who have fuelled Europe's largest migration crisis since World War II.

With today's readmission, Turkey this year has accepted the return of at least 447 migrants from Greece, officials said.

In the last week or so agreements to deploy North Atlantic Treaty Organisation warships to the Aegean Sea and a tentative deal with Turkey to send back would-be refugees en masse are raising concerns among rights activists and legal experts.

The deal has not been finalized and talks are due to continue in Brussels on March 17.

The European Commission appears anxious over the development of alternative migration routes, passing via Albania - Italy and Bulgaria, since the Idomeni border hasn't opened to migrants since Monday. And Europe will now be returning some asylum-seekers to a country, Turkey, that doesn't accept all of the Geneva convention on refugees, such as the non-refoulement principle that forbids "pushing people back into danger".

Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia said on Tuesday they would place new restrictions on the entry of refugees.

Greek authorities handed out leaflets in Idomeni on Saturday, informing the migrants and refugees that the main passage to northern Europe is shut and urging them to move to buildings and hospitality centers across Greece that had been set aside for the goal, according to a government official and a Reuters eyewitness. It said the issue had been hotly debated at an operational level by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government.

Instead of trying to outsource our problems by signing up to a dodgy deal with Turkey, we should be working together to take matters into our own hands, by delivering three immediate actions.

Desperate migrants and refugees piled up Thursday in fetid fields of mud at a closed border crossing as officials warned that a well-trodden route to Europe used by hundreds of thousands in the past year was no longer available.

More than a million migrants and refugees crossed into Europe in 2015.

At a Brussels summit this week, the European Union and Turkey indicated they are nearing an agreement to address the flood of migrants, as we reported.

Weber also said Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan's seizure of the country's leading opposition newspaper, Zaman, last week was "unaccpetable".

"We are going to keep protesting and keep doing what we are doing until they know we are human beings and we deserve simple human rights", he said as he sat on the tracks in the pouring rain after seven nights spent in the camp.

Refugees who arrive in Italy and Greece usually head towards other European destinations, especially Germany.

He also questions Turkey's capacity to register all the migrants sent back from Greece and its ability to manage the process.

"May God take his revenge on them - everyone who did this to us - from whatever country they come from", said Raife al-Baltajy, a Syrian from near Aleppo, as she waited for a bus with her family.

More than 141,000 refugees have reached Europe by sea so far this year, according to the International Organization of Migration (IOM).

Source: Turkey won't take back migrants already on Greek islands