PM: Migrants will be turned back at the border

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Sunday warned migrants in a series of tweets that they will be turned back if they enter Greece illegally. Following a cabinet meeting on national security, Mitsotakis said the national security council decided "to increase the level of deterrence at our borders to the maximum."

In a news briefing after the cabinet meeting, government spokesman Stelios Petsas announced that Greece will not accept for a month, beginning Sunday, any asylum applications from migrants entering the country illegally and, where possible, will immediately return them to the country they entered from.

Greece will also ask the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, also known as Frontex, to engage in a rapid border intervention to protect Greece's borders, which are also EU's borders, Petsas said.

The decisions will be communicated to the EU's Foreign Affairs Council so that Greece can benefit from temporary measures to face an emergency.

Petsas said Turkey is violating its commitments from the 2016 EU-Turkey agreement and of becoming itself a trafficker instead of cracking down on them.

He called the recent migration movement "a sudden, massive, organized and coordinated pressure from population movements in its eastern, land and sea, borders."