KILIS, Turkey — The border crossing where hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees entered Turkey in the first years of the war is almost deserted. It’s been closed for a year, and any Syrian hoping to be smuggled to safety in the neighboring country risks being shot.

Just across the frontier, in Syria, the situation is infinitely worse. Some 45,000 civilians were displaced by recent fighting between moderate rebels and ISIL in mid-April, and 20,000 are sleeping out in the open, aid workers say.

“People are sitting on blankets, sleeping under the trees,” Ali al-Sheikh, a Syrian humanitarian volunteer, said at the Kilis border crossing Saturday. “They are short of drinking water. There are very few tents. There is sewage all around.”

This is the scene that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Council President Donald Tusk didn’t see when they visited a model refugee camp 50 kilometers from the border last weekend. The town of Kilis, whose 90,000 inhabitants have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for their warm reception of 130,000 Syrians, was deemed too dangerous to visit.

Violence is on the rise, with ISIL militants frequently firing rockets from Syria into Turkey. Since January, 17 people have been killed and 61 wounded in cross-border attacks. The latest occurred the day before Merkel and Tusk's visit aimed at propping up the controversial EU-Turkey deal that the German chancellor regards as key to limiting the arrivals of refugees in Europe.

Although the refugee crisis has given Turkey the chance to pursue its agenda of drawing closer to the EU, this is a genuine humanitarian catastrophe that can barely be contained, much less manipulated.

"We are being killed for saving lives — 4 percent of volunteers have been killed and many more injured in the line of duty” — Raed al-Saleh, head of the Syrian Civil Defence organization

Turkey has repeatedly called for the creation of a safe area inside Syria where the internally displaced can reside, and Merkel said she too has pleaded for one. But in light of Russia’s air intervention, Iran’s dispatch of ground troops into Syria and the U.S.’s refusal to set up such a zone without Russia’s approval at the U.N. Security Council, it no longer seems possible.

The big question is what will be the next twist in the string of catastrophic developments.

Were Turkey to reopen its borders with Syria, the country would be hard pressed to handle the influx, and it could see public protests, the first signs of which appeared in Kilis in recent weeks.

Ankara has generally been able to avoid that kind of turmoil despite hosting 3 million refugees. But keeping the borders closed may be unsustainable. Should the number of refugees grow even larger, intensifying social tensions, demands on EU countries to take in more refugees would rise.

Container camps

In the past weeks, the Syrian government, backed by Russians and the Iranians, has resumed its campaign to complete the siege of the rebel-held parts of Aleppo, Syria's largest city in which an estimated 250,000 civilians now are protected by moderate forces. It’s possible that up to half a million more will try to leave northern Syria if the fighting continues or even intensifies.

The Syrian Civil Defence organization, which has rescued tens of thousands of Syrians pinned down by barrel bomb attacks on residential quarters and monitored violations of the two month old ceasefire, was itself the target of a concerted attack Monday. Its office in Al-Atareb, just north of Aleppo, was directly hit by two air strikes, followed by a surface-to-surface missile, launched from the ground. Five volunteers were killed.

"We are being killed for saving lives — 4 percent of volunteers have been killed and many more injured in the line of duty,” said Raed al-Saleh, the head of the organization.

Lost in the leaders’ discussion this past weekend was whether Turkey can improve on its widely praised management of the refugee crisis. Refugee camps hold only about 10 per cent of the millions of Syrians now in Turkey, and even though these are well-run, orderly and clean, few are happy to be living there indefinitely.

“We only want a safe zone for refugees, not for ordinary civilians, to provide the minimal requirements of life”

Nizip, which Merkel and Tusk visited, consist of twin camps located on the banks of the River Euphrates; one has 5,500 refugees, living in mainly in containers, and on the other side of the highway another 16,000 people are mostly living in tents.

The camps are far from any town. Movement in and out is closely monitored, the possibility of earning any income is limited and the Syrians’ stay could be indefinite.

“Life is not about drinking and eating,” said Mohamad Naief el-Dibo, 46, a lawyer from Aleppo who is on the camp’s legal committee. “Everyone knows that these containers are meant to transport goods, not to live in.”

'Dying every moment'

The problem is “you are not doing anything,” el-Dibo said.

Turkey has not granted Syrians legal refugee status, classifying them as guests, which deprives them of a place in society and rights including the freedom to travel, he said. Although Turkey has announced it will provide work permits for Syrians — a step Merkel praised as “courageous” in light of the pressure it puts on Turks seeking work — this is yet to be implemented.

Lawyers said about 70 families — some 400 people — have quit the camp in the past year to try the boat crossing to Greece. “If Syrians had legal status, they would not risk their lives to go to sea,” said Ali Al Nasar, 41, a former Syrian judge. Ironically, some restrictions such as the travel clampdown were imposed in order to fulfill the terms of the EU-Turkey agreement.

Nizip seems a world apart from the reality in Syria.

"Today, Turkey is the best example in the whole world of how to treat refugees. No one has a right to lecture Turkey on what it should do” — Donald Tusk

“Here we are safe. We are not living in luxury, but it is fine,” said Hamiya, 15, a Syrian from the Circassian minority, who was in the official greeting party for Merkel's visit. “Our demands are not for the people in the camps but for the people inside Syria.”

At the border, which is now open only to aid workers and leaders of the moderate rebel forces, everyone passing through last Saturday seemed engaged in addressing the humanitarian emergency.

“We now have some 45,000 refugees from these villages taken by Daesh,” said Abu Bekre Najar, deputy manager of the Bab al-Salama camp for the internally displaced in Azaz, on the other side of the border. Humanitarian groups still need another 2,000 to 3,000 tents to shelter the latest group of people displaced by the extremists, he said.

EU leaders, he said, “should feel the agony of the Syrian people, who are dying every moment.”

Imad Dimen, a commander of the Sham Front rebel group, pleaded with the international community to do more for the displaced: “We only want a safe zone for refugees, not for ordinary civilians, to provide the minimal requirements of life.”

Golden pages

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's disregard for what most Europeans consider to be basic democratic standards for Turkey's citizens has prompted human rights organizations and refugee advocates to oppose the deal, telling EU leaders that Ankara has extracted a too high a price in exchange for taking back refugees.

Merkel, however, has good reasons for marking the initial successes of the month-old agreement, despite the criticism it earns her back home. The number of arrivals now averages 120 a day, down from 6,000 in November, according to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. The two sides have begun implementing the provisions under which migrants arriving illegally will be sent back and for every Syrian readmitted to Turkey, EU countries will accept one through normal channels.

The accord could prove a breakthrough in the biggest humanitarian crisis facing the region since World War II, as well as paving the way to possible rapprochement between the EU and Turkey.

“Those who take the humanitarian path, their names will go down in the golden pages of history," Davutoğlu said Saturday, who arrived in the camp with the EU officials on an armored bus with two black-clad sharpshooters on the roof — a sign of how seriously the government takes the security threat posed by ISIL fighters inside Turkey.

Tusk replied with a put-down for human rights groups who say Turkey is unfit to receive returned refugees: “Today, Turkey is the best example in the whole world of how to treat refugees. No one has a right to lecture Turkey on what it should do.”

However, the deal under which the EU will provide €6 billion to fund projects for Syrians who stay in Turkey can still fall apart.

It calls for visa requirement for Turks to be lifted if the country meets a list of 72 EU conditions. That could face resistance in the European Parliament, but Davutoğlu said it was a "promise to the Turkish people" without which the migrant readmission process would not be applied. "My intent is to stick to what was agreed," said Merkel.

Mousab Alhamadee contributed to this article.