Merkel visits Turkey to discuss flow of refugees

Merkel, whose country let in more than a million asylum seekers last year, will be holding talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in the Turkish capital on Monday.

The EU has promised $3.3bn of aid in return for Ankara’s help in stopping the flow of new arrivals on its shores, most of whom make their way through Turkey.
The bloc’s leaders have said Ankara is obliged to keep its frontiers open to refugees, while also pressing for tighter border controls for those entering Europe.
Turkish aid workers have been setting up tents and distributing supplies for thousands of new Syrian refugees kept from entering Turkey at the border.
Some 35,000 people fled a Syrian government offensive in the Aleppo area last week, trying to enter Turkey’s Kilis border region.
But Turkey has so far closed the border to most of them despite appeals by EU leaders to let them cross.
The country already shelters more than 2.5 million refugees from Syria’s war.
Many Syrians have gone on to seek asylum in the EU and made up the largest group among more than one million refugees and other migrants who entered illegally last year, mainly by sea from Turkey.

The European Union has urged Turkey to open its borders to thousands of Syrians fleeing an onslaught by government forces and intense Russian airstrikes.
Turkey kept its Oncupinar border crossing closed on Saturday despite a significant increase in the number of arrivals to the European gateway in the past 48 hours.
As many as 70,000 people are expected to head for the border in the coming days, said Suleyman Tapsiz, governor of Turkey’s Kilis border province. There are already between 30,000 and 35,000 displaced Syrians on the Syrian side of the border being cared for by Turkey. Aid workers said the refugees were being directed to nearby camps.