Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for a "cool-headed" stance by the European Union in relation to ongoing developments in Turkey, while at the same time pointing to a need for "specific messages" to be sent to the Turkish leadership in Ankara.
Tsipras' comments came during a working dinner for EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday, a venue that served for discussion on EU-Turkey ties.
According to reports out of the Belgian capital, the mood within the EU's top echelons is that Turkey is increasingly distancing itself from long-established (Copenhagen summit) criteria for its eventual accession to the Union, and especially in terms of preserving democratic values and the rule of law.
"...for Greece, issues dealing with democracy and the rule of law in Turkey are not just matters of principle, but have the potential to influence defense (policy), security and public order in our country," Tsipras reportedly told his counterparts.
The worse migrant/refugee crisis to affect Europe over the past several decades has plagued Greece disproportionately since 2015, as up to a million people landed on Greece's eastern Aegean islands after being ferried over from neighboring Turkey by people smugglers or by their own means. Beyond war refugees from Iraq and Syria, who first found shelter in Turkey and then attempted to reach preferred western Europe via Greece, irregular migrants from various parts of the Third World also took advantage of the Mideast turmoil to illegally enter Greece, in a bid to continue on to Europe.
