Orban: Turkey releasing migrants to Syria in Hungary's interest

It is in Hungary's interest that Turkey releases migrants towards Syria rather than in the direction of Europe, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told public radio on Friday. Turkey hosts some three million migrants, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to "let them out" if Europe fails to take over some of the financial burden, Orban said in an interview to Kossuth Radio. Migrants can break out towards Europe or Syria, their homeland, Orban said. The latter needs to be stabilised for them to go back, he added. "That is what seems to have happened there," he said, adding that Turkey had set up a safe zone in northern Syria recently. If Turkey "opens the gates to Europe", hundreds of thousands of migrants will flood into Greece, the Balkans and eventually all the way to the Croatian or Hungarian border, he said.