Orban To Erdogan: Hungary to ‘Use Force’ if Turkey ‘Opens Gates’ to Illegal Migrants
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has vowed to “use force” to protect the country’s borders after Turkey threatened to unleash a wave of immigrants into Europe, French TV network Euronews reported.
The statement came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s threatened to “open the gates and send 3.6 million” migrants over to Europe.
“If Turkey sets off further hundreds of thousands on top of this, then we will need to use force to protect the Hungarian border and the Serbian-Hungarian frontier and I do not wish for anyone that we should need to resort to that,” Prime Minister Orbán said.
President Erdogan threatened to open up the floodgates and swarm Europe with migrants after European leaders criticized Turkey for launching a military offensive against the Kurdish forces in neighboring Syria. Following the U.S. troops withdrawal, the Turkish army invaded northern Syria to target the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The U.S.-allied SDF, a coalition of Kurdish, Assyrian Christians, and Arabs fighters, played a key role in pushing back the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
Euronews reported Prime Minister Orbán’s comments:
Hungary would “use force” at its southern border with Serbia to protect the European Union’s frontier if Turkey follows through on its threat to open the gates to Europe to refugees, Hungary’s Viktor Orban said.(…)Turkey — who currently hosts 3.6 million Syrian refugees — threatened to “open the gates” to allow those already in the country to continue their way to Europe if the EU acted against the NATO ally for its incursion into northeast Syria.”The next weeks will decide what Turkey does with these people,” Orban told private broadcaster HirTV in an interview late on Wednesday. “It can steer them in two directions: take them back to Syria or set them off towards Europe.”If Turkey chooses the latter, these people will arrive at Hungary’s southern border in huge masses,” Orban said, adding that the EU should provide more funds to Turkey to help rebuild Syrian towns.”If Turkey sets off further hundreds of thousands on top of this, then we will need to use force to protect the Hungarian border and the Serbian-Hungarian frontier and I do not wish for anyone that we should need to resort to that,” he said.
Hundreds and thousands of Kurds have reportedly been displaced since Erdogan ordered the military offensive against the Kurdish strongholds and population centers.
Even before the Turkish offensive began, neighboring Greece registered a huge surge in the number of illegal immigrants crossing over from Turkey. The threat of an intensified conflict in Syria has alarmed European leaders, who fear a fresh migrant wave bigger than the one in 2015.
“We need to do more to help our European partners with controls at the EU’s external borders. We’ve left them alone for too long,” German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said earlier this month while touring Turkey. “If we don’t do this, we’ll experience a wave of refugees like in 2015 – or perhaps an even larger one.”
Despite German promises, little effort has been made to support Hungary and other eastern European as they struggle to stem the migrant influx. The European Union has repeatedly attacked Prime Minister Orbán for erecting a border wall to stop illegal immigrants. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker slammed Prime Minister Orbán and other eastern European leaders for their “short-sightedness” for their desire to “see a Europe that is divided by anti-migrant walls.” The EU has threatened Hungary with economic sanctions for refusing to take in more migrants.
Prime Minister Orbán, a former dissident who fought Hungary’s Communist regime during the Cold War, has emerged as the leading defender of Christian values in Europe.
“We are working on building an old-school Christian democracy, rooted in European traditions,” Orbán said after winning the 2o18 Hungarian election. “We believe in the importance of the nation and in Hungary we do not want to yield ground to any supranational business or political empire.”
With Prime Minister Orbán at the helm, Hungary has become the leading opponent of the globalist immigration policies pursued by Brussels. Hungary has rejected the EU’s migrant redistribution plan that seeks to settle immigrants landing on Europe’s shores and borders across all of the 27 member states. Despite immense pressure from the EU, Prime Minister Orbán refused to sign the United Nations migrant pact backed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former U.S. President Barack Obama. Hungary pulled out of the UN-sponsored pact, calling it a “threat to the world.”
While Prime Minister Orbán ramps up Hungarian border defenses to repel an impending migrant wage, Germany braces itself to receive more ISIS terrorists fleeing Kurdish detention in the wake of the Turkish offensive. Instead of barring them from entering the country, Berlin hopes to “de-radicalize” the returning Islamic terrorists.
“In the long-run, we need to do everything to de-radicalize these people so that they don’t pose a threat to the society,” Herbert Reul, interior minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, told Die Welt on Monday.
Referring to the hundreds of children of German ISIS terrorists — many of them thoroughly indoctrinated at ISIS-run madrasas, the Islamist schools — returning to Germany, Minister Reul, a member of Chancellor Merkel’s CDU party, said that “they are the victims of the ISIS, the war and the ideology of their parents.”
Trump praises Orbán’s tough immigration policy: “You’ve done a good job and you’ve kept your country safe”
[Cover image via YouTube]
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