Turkey to take in 200 more migrants from Greece today

Turkey / AFP

Turkey is to receive around 200 more migrants from Greece on Wednesday under a controversial deal with the EU after taking in a similar number at the start of this week, a Turkish official said.
The new wave of around 200 migrants would be shipped from the Greek island of Lesbos into the Turkish harbour town of Dikili on the Aegean sea on Wednesday morning, a source in the governor’s office of Izmir province said on Tuesday.
There were no immediate details on the logistics or the nationalities of the migrants. No migrants were due to be returned to Turkey on
Tuesday.
Greece had on Monday expelled 202 migrants under the deal agreed between the EU and Turkey aimed at quelling the bloc’s worst migration crisis since World War II.
Only two of the migrants were Syrian refugees and the rest mainly from Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as other countries in the Middle East and Africa.
Following rapid registration formalities and health checks, the migrants were then taken in buses to reception centres in the Turkish region of Kirklareli close to the border with Bulgaria hundreds of kilometres to the north.
They will remain there while the Turkish authorities analyse their cases ahead of eventual deportation to their home countries.
But the deal has caused huge controversy, with rights groups including Amnesty International claiming Turkey could not be considered a “safe country” for the return of refugees. Under the pact Turkey has agreed to take back migrants who arrived in Greece after March 20.
Europe has agreed that for every Syrian deported, it will accept one refugee from Turkey’s vast camps, a move it hopes will discourage people from taking the highly risky journey across the Aegean sea. Greek migration spokesman Yiorgos Kyritsis said on Tuesday that a rush of asylum applications on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios by those trying to avoid deportation had slowed operations to expel the migrants.