Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to open his country's borders with Europe made good on a longstanding threat to let refugees into the continent.
In Syria, the government said it was closing its airspace for any flights or drones across the country's northwestern region. It said any aircraft that penetrates Syrian airspace will be treated as hostile and shot down.
Ankara is worried it might come under renewed international pressure to open its now sealed border with Syria and offer refuge to hundreds of thousands more Syrian civilians. Turkey already hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Turkish Interior Minister Suleman Soylu tweeted that 76,385 refugees had left Turkey via Edirne, the province bordering Greece and Bulgaria as of Sunday morning. But there was no evidence to support his claim. Greece has shut its border, and there were a few dozen arrests of people who managed to cross through the border, Greek authorities have said.
“Turkish soldiers with cutters in their hands were cutting the wires of the fence to lead the illegal migrants” into crossing the border, he said. “The attempt was thwarted by the intervention of our own patrol that happened to be passing that area on patrol at the time, and it repaired the damage in the fence,” he added.
Dozens of Turkish soldiers have been killed by the Russian-backed Syrian government forces around Idlib in recent days.
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