German, EU leaders heading to Turkey to promote migrant deal

BRUSSELS (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel and top European Union officials plan to travel close to Turkey's border with Syria in hopes of promoting a troubled month-old agreement to manage a refugee crisis that has left hundreds of thousands stranded on the migrant trail to Europe.

In an effort to persuade European and Turkish citizens of the deal's merits, Merkel, EU Council President Donald Tusk, EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu plan to gather in Gaziantep across the border from the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Kobane, epicenters for years of civil war that have abated since a shaky February cease-fire agreement.

The U.N. refugee agency, rights groups and EU lawmakers have roundly criticized the EU-Turkey migrant deal over the legal and moral implications of expelling people from EU member Greece back to Turkey, a country that many consider unsafe on security and human rights grounds.

[...] Greece, currently home to 54,000 stranded migrants seeking to travel deeper into Europe, faces unrelenting pressure as the long-promised relocation of asylum seekers from Greece to other EU countries moves pitifully slowly.

When Pope Francis took a dozen Syrians to the Vatican from the island of Lesbos last weekend, he effectively relocated more refugees from Greece than more than a dozen EU countries have managed since September under an earlier European plan to share responsibility for 160,000 refugees in Greece and Italy.

Since last month's pact, 325 migrants in Greece have been returned to Turkey, only two of them Syrians.