Turkey has made preparations to take in up to 500 migrants from Greece tomorrow under a plan agreed with the EU to reduce the flow of illegal migration, the Turkish interior minister said.
Local authorities say the first wave of migrants sent back from Greece will arrive in the resort town of Dikili, just opposite the Greek island of Lesbos which has become a major hub for migration to the European Union.
"We have prepared for 500 people to come on Monday. We are making our plans and putting in place our capacities," Interior Minister Efkan Ala was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency today.
"We have been in touch with the Greek authorities and said we could take 500 people and they have given us 400 names. Tomorrow it's possible that this figure could change," he added.
Under the scheme -- which has been condemned by rights groups -- Turkey will send one Syrian refugee to Europe in exchange for every Syrian it takes back from Greece.
The plan aims to halt the flow of illegal migration and break up the lucrative people-smuggling racket after around a million migrants, many of them Syrian refugees, crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey last year in search of a better life in the EU.
Ala said the numbers crossing had already fallen substantially in the last 10 days to just 300 people a day, and that since the start of 2016 Turkey had detained some 1,715 people-smugglers with 351 of them jailed.
Meanwhile some 65,000 illegal migrants had been caught and prevented from leaving Turkey since January 1, four and a half times more than in the same period last year, he said.
Ala indicated citizens of countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan sent back by Greece would be returned by Turkey to their home countries.
Syrians will be sent on to refugee camps or other areas within Turkey, he added.
Turkey has angrily denied claims by Amnesty International that it had been forcibly sending Syrians back home and that it was not a safe country for the return of the refugees.
