Viktor Orban said that Hungary would have to "use force" at its southern border to protect the European Union's frontier if Turkey delivers on a threat to open the gates for refugees, Reuters reported.
"If Turkey sets off further hundreds of thousands on top of (existing migrant flows), then we will need to use force to protect the Hungarian border and the Serbian-Hungarian frontier and I do not wish for anyone that we should need to resort to that," Orban stressed.
Orban said that currently there were about 90,000 people on the Balkans migration route and their ranks could swell to 100,000 shortly.
"The next weeks will decide what Turkey does with these people," Orban said in an interview. "It can steer them in two directions: take them back to Syria or set them off towards Europe.
Earlier, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to "open doors" for Syrian refugees to Europe if the EU decides to refer to the Turkish military operation in northeast Syria as an occupation.
Viktor Orban is known to be one of the most fierce anti-immigration advocates in Europe and has categorically opposed the idea of accepting refugees from other European countries under migrant resettlement schemes proposed by the European Union.
The migration crisis broke out four years ago after hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers started arriving in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa, fleeing armed conflicts, natural disasters or looking for better economic opportunities.
