Bulgaria Fails to Broker Turkey-Greece Summit on Migrants

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov met Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Monday evening to discuss possible measures to deal with thousands of migrants seeking to leave Turkish territory and reach Western Europe via Greece or Bulgaria.

Borisov sought to convince Erdogan to come to Sofia later this week for a trilateral summit with Greece on the issue.

But Erdogan refused, citing allegations that Greek police killed two Syrian refugees on the Turkish-Greek border. Athens has denied that this happened.

"I put a great deal of effort into a trilateral summit, or a summit in a larger format, to be held in Sofia on Friday. We could have maybe succeeded in this," Borisov told a late-night press conference.

"But at that point, information regarding the killed migrants arrived. And in fact, the president [Erdogan] was ready to come to Sofia, but since he did not want to sit at the same table with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the summit has been cancelled," he added.

Erdogan meanwhile lashed out at Greece for not allowing the migrants to enter its territory, alleging that Athens is violating international human rights law.

Thousands of refugees have become stuck on the Turkish border with Greece since Turkey announced last week that it would no longer hinder them from leaving for Europe, while Greek border guards have forcibly prevented them from entering the country.

Bulgaria only seems to have been affected by the migrant outflow in a minor way so far. There have been no official reports of attempted illegal entries to the country yet.

However, Bulgarian National Television reported on Monday that small groups of people have been seen trying to enter.

Stella Nanu, a United Nations...