EU cannot accept Turkish 'blackmail': Italian prime minister
The European Union must not bow to threats from
Turkey to push millions of Syrian refugees into EU countries, Italian Prime
Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Friday, adding that Ankara should stop its
military operations in northern Syria at once.
“The EU cannot accept this blackmail. Turkish
efforts to welcome in Syrian refugees cannot then become a tool of blackmail
for a military initiative that we cannot accept and which must immediately
stop,” Conte told reporters.
Turkey, which still formally aspires to join the
European Union despite mounting EU criticism of Ankara’s human rights record,
has been stung by EU criticism of its air and land offensive against formerly
U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters.
In a speech on Thursday, Turkish President Tayyip
Erdogan told the European Union to “pull itself together” and threatened that
if the bloc labeled the operation an occupation he would “open the gates and
send 3.6 million refugees” to Europe.
