Greece and Turkey are again embroiled in a heated dispute over the crossings of refugees into the European Member state, with one blaming the other over who should take responsibility, which puts innocent lives in danger.

MeRA25 has issued a statement in which it has called out the leaders of Greece and Turkey, as well as the European Union as a whole, for their role in the continuous deaths seen in the Mediterranean.

Full MeRA25 statement on the latest Greece-Turkey refugee dispute:

“It is embarrassing and humiliating for Greeks and Europeans that our governments are investing in increasing human deaths in the Mediterranean to stop the most natural of human behaviours: that of migration. It is especially hypocritical if we think about how Europeans have, for centuries, either migrated or colonised large parts of the world.

Our governments and the European Union, in collaboration with Turkey since 2015, are murdering refugees and migrants at sea, serving the worst of European far-right agendas. So-called pushbacks have become common practice as much as by Frontex as the coast guards of Europe’s peripheral nations, but our nations and the EU refuse to even acknowledge them.

European duplicity, which views authoritarian leaders like Recep Tayyip Erdogan as partners as long as it serves their interests, has been made apparent in the shift with which the EU changed its footing in its relationship with Vladimir Putin’s regime.

We cannot afford to suffer the same illusions with Turkey until it is too late, especially when Kyriakos Mitsotakis – a favourite stooge of the EU establishment – is taking Greece in the same authoritarian direction. Greece ranked 108th out of 180 nations for freedom of speech this year, by far the worst ranking of an EU member, while anyone who tries to point at this fact is met with the same treatment as those pointing to pushbacks: governmental denial and derision for anti-Greek sentiment.

The latest scandal is the heightened pressure that the Greek government has exercised on MEPs of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) to prevent them from signing a letter expressing concern for pushbacks in Greece’s Evros River. Greece, under the leadership of New Democracy, is devolving into a pariah state, and that should worry all Europeans.”

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