Erdogan meets virtually with EU leaders under coronavirus cloud

Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a video conference call with France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Boris Johnson today to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis, Libya and the coronavirus pandemic. The mini summit was meant to take place in Istanbul but was held virtually instead because of the travel restrictions stemming from the spread of the virus. The reported number of cases in Turkey had risen to 98 at the last count with one fatality so far.

Photographs showing Erdogan and his top aides sitting around a table facing a giant screen will have snuffed out mounting speculation that the Turkish leader may have contracted COVID-19. His cheeks were ruddy and he seemed alert. Erdogan hadn’t been seen in public since Friday prayers, where thermal cameras were used to watch for potential carriers in the congregation.

Details of today’s summit have yet to emerge but the primary focus was to have been Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib, where the latest Russian-backed regime offensive has sent over a million civilians fleeing to the Turkish border. As the EU sat on its hands, Turkey declared that refugees within its borders were free to leave, encouraging thousands to pile up along the Greek frontier. The hard-nosed gambit was calculated to shock the EU into upping its aid for refugees and to get it to engage more actively to end the Syrian conflict and not rely solely on Russian-brokered terms.

EU leaders denounced the move as blackmail even as they scrambled to appease Erdogan, sending Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov as an emissary in the early days of the crisis.