On Monday, Merkel and Davutoğlu called for NATO patrols in the Aegean sea to help ease the Syrian refugee crisis, most recently exacerbated by assaults on Aleppo by the Syrian regime and Russia. The European Commission formally backed this proposal on Tuesday. The surprise request will be on the agenda of the meeting of NATO defense ministers today and Thursday where the original focus was supposed to be Eastern Europe, Russia and defense spending. Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, and the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Douglas Lute, seem open to the idea of providing some type of help, yet emphasized Tuesday that management of the crisis was mainly the EU’s responsibility.
