Turkey braces for refugees as Iranian flock to borders

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00:00Well, as people try to escape the Iranian capital, Tehran,

00:04some even leaving the country altogether at the border with Turkey,

00:08a slow trickle of people making their way across,

00:11amid fears that numbers could increase, of course,

00:13if the fighting continues or expands.

00:15So we're going to cross now to Ankara,

00:17talk to our correspondent who joins us from there, Jasper Mortimer.

00:20Jasper, how big is the fear that more and more people could begin to

00:24or try to cross into Turkey?

00:26Well, it is a concern.

00:30There have been articles about it in the Turkish press.

00:34You know, during the Syrian civil war,

00:36Turkey received three and a half million Syrian refugees.

00:41But so far, with this Iran-Israeli war, it is not like that.

00:46I'm here in Ankara, but last night I had a long conversation

00:50with a German journalist at the Kapikoy gate on the Turkish-Iranian border.

00:57And she'd been there since Friday.

00:59And she told me that her impression was that hundreds of Iranians were crossing each day,

01:05just hundreds.

01:06And she said similar figures were going back.

01:09These were Iranians who'd been caught off guard outside the country when the war started.

01:15And they were returning home to support their families, look after their homes and that sort of thing.

01:20If you look at the videos from Kapikoy gate,

01:24you see the people coming across are like those that you would see arriving at an airport

01:29with one or two suitcases and a bag on top of the larger suitcase.

01:34They are not like the Syrian refugees who would wrap all their earthly belongings in a sheet

01:40and carry it like a sack on their back.

01:44So she said to me, I can definitely say this is not a refugee crisis.

01:51Jasper, NATO summit starts tomorrow.

01:54The Turkish foreign minister still no condemnation directly of the US

01:59getting involved with these strikes over the weekend.

02:04That is correct.

02:05The Turkish foreign ministry didn't condemn the US strike,

02:09but it said that it feared the strike could escalate violence, inflame the war,

02:16and it called for a return to diplomacy.

02:19And I think at the NATO summit Tuesday, Wednesday,

02:23France, Britain and Germany will be delivering a similar message,

02:27you know, try and de-escalate the situation and return to diplomacy.

02:31However, if diplomacy is to work, there has to be flexibility at the negotiating table.

02:38And so far, Iran has consistently said that its uranium enrichment program is non-negotiable.

02:45Yesterday, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, accused the Iranians of stonewalling

02:51when it came to the diplomatic talks.

02:54And the Europeans, France, Britain and German foreign ministers,

02:58when they met the Iranian foreign minister in Geneva on Friday,

03:02they ran into the same stonewall because their request for Iran to halt its enrichment program,

03:09Iran dismissed as unrealistic.

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