Vice president of conservative opposition party New Democracy and newly appointed shadow minister of national defense Adonis Georgiadis believes a collapse of the Euro-Turkish migration deal highly likely given that the EU is reluctant to grant visa-free travel to Turkish citizens.

“SYRIZA has staffed the committees examining asylum applications with extreme left-wing members, resulting in all migrants arriving on the eastern Aegean islands being classified as refugees,” said Mr. Georgiadis.

In statements aired today on Skai TV, Georgiadis noted that the slowness of the application process has overburdened the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean, in effect exposing Greece to massive new influxes of migrants should Turkey decide to withdraw from its migration deal with the European Union.  “They (Syriza) have put our country at the mercy of Erdogan,” he said.  “If Erdogan turns on the faucet, there is no telling what will happen,” he added.

Georgiadis considers the collapse of the Euro-Turkish agreement on migratory flow highly likely given the EU’s reluctance to grant the visa-free travel to Turkish nationals requested by Erdogan in exchange for taking back migrants from Greece.

In the wake of recent events at the Souda refugee camp in Chios, Mr. Georgiadis said that the first priority should be to reduce the number of asylum-seekers hosted in the island hospitality centers, and next to speed up and improve the procedure for distinguishing between refugees and migrants. “If asylum seekers are judged to be refugees, then they should be given their papers and allowed to continue their journeys, but if migrants, they should be kept in closed or gated hospitality centers until they are repatriated,” Mr. Georgiadis concluded.