In his first public comments since Thursday's deaths of 33 Turkish troops in Idlib, likely by a Russian airstrike (though Ankara has preferred to blame Syrian forces), Erdogan said this number will likely climb to as many as 30,000 on Saturday."We are not in a situation to handle a new wave of refugees" from Syria, he said, after previously threatening repeatedly to "open the gates" on the over 3 million Syrian refugees Turkey is hosting.

It looks like he's now making good on this threat, though questions remain over if this is truly the beginning of a 2015 level flood, or a foretaste of what could come:

"We will not close these doors in the coming period and this will continue. Why? The European Union needs to keep its promises. We don't have to take care of this many refugees, to feed them," Erdogan said.

He also reiterated and underscored that some 1.5 million refugees were ready to exit war-torn Idlib amid the Syrian-Russian offensive intensifying in the south of the province. Turkey is now in an open war situation with the Syrian Army, claiming to have killed scores of Syrian national troops and paramilitary forces over the last days.