InfoMigrants By Sertan Sanderson Published on : 2021/02/22
The Cypriot government has lashed out at Turkey, saying it was indirectly involved in helping create a new migration route that disproportionally burdened Cyprus. The island nation and EU member state has had the bloc’s highest percentage of asylum seekers for several years.
The Republic of Cyprus has seen an influx in asylum seekers in recent weeks and months, with many migrants entering the southern part of the country by illegally crossing the UN-patrolled buffer zone that divides the island between the Greek-majority south and a self-declared breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north.
The Greek government has called on the European Union to help ensure the return of 1,450 failed asylum seekers currently in camps on the Greek Islands to Turkey "on the basis of the EU-Turkey deal".