Editorial: A coordinated, EU-wide response to Turkey

Once again, Ankara is playing precarious games.

This time the issue is not just Greece, or its geopolitical acrobatics with Russia, Europe, and the US.

Now, once again, Turkey has decided that the time has come to exploit the refugee problem and use it as a tool to its advantage.

It is a strategy with which Greece is quite familiar, that is inhuman in its treatment of refugees, and that poses a danger for the entire European Union.

The timing is clearly crucial.

It comes immediately after Greece and France decided to move forward in a coordinated manner and to send a stern message against all manner of revisionism.

Turkey is playing its games in an environment in which the Russian invasion of Ukraine is in progress, with unpleasant results for the invaders.

Moreover, all this is occurring amidst a domestic political confluence of events in which the elections in Turkey are approaching and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is attempting to strengthen his position vis a vis his opponents, and render more cohesive his narrative that Turkey is a “major regional power”.

These are matters that are of concern to Erdogan.

The pressing issue is the need for Europe to respond to his provocations in a unified, coordinated, and extremely swift manner.

The EU must highlight both the humanitarian aspect of the problem and the issue of geopolitical balances.

In no event can the European Union – as weak as its architecture may be – permit a revisionist power to play games at the expense of its member-states.

Moreover, the refugee problem is not a bilateral Greek-Turkish affair.

It is an issue that concerns all of Europe and shakes the cohesion of the EU.