Turkey receives more EU money to keep Syrian refugees from crossing

The EU Wednesday unlocked a further three billion euros ($3.7 billion) for refugees in Turkey, the second tranche of a controversial 2016 deal to curb the flow of migrants coming to Europe.

"The Commission is today launching the mobilisation for the second three billion euro tranche of the facility for refugees in Turkey," the European Commission said.

The EU and Ankara struck a deal in March 2016 aiming to cut off the sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands that enabled 850,000 people to pour into Europe last year, many of them fleeing the brutal war in Syria.

The agreement, under which all migrants landing on the Greek islands face being sent back to Turkey, went into effect almost immediately.

At the time, the UN refugee agency harshly criticised the EU-Turkey deal on curbing the influx of migrants to Greece, saying reception centres had become "detention facilities", and suspended some activities in the country.

"Under the new provisions, these sites have now become detention facilities", the UNHCR said in a statement in March 2016.

On the Turkish-Greek border, the Greek Council of Refugees (GCR) said in a statement in February at least 40 people were arrested and sent back to Turkey in 2017, including "families in vulnerable situations, pregnant women, minors and victims of torture."

GCR called these actions "arbitrary" and against international law. 

The EU last year reached another controversial agreement with chaos-wracked Libya to stem the flow of migrants from that country.

As a result, the EU saw in 2017 the lowest number of detected 'illegal' border-crossings since the migrant crisis began four years ago, the EU border agency Frontex said last month.

"The annual total of 204,700 marked a significant decrease compared to recent years, but not yet a return to the situation before 2014," the Warsaw-based agency said, upon releasing a new report based on figures provided by EU member states.

It amounted to a 60 percent decline from the 511,000 illegal border-crossings in 2016, and far below the 1.8 million in 2015, according to the report.

The drop was especially observed on the eastern Mediterranean migratory route which connects Turkey to Greece, and the central Mediterranean route connecting Libya to Italy.