Turkey Blackmails Europe on Visa-Free Travel
24
April, 2016
- The European Union now finds itself in a classic catch-22 situation. Large numbers of Muslim migrants will flow to Europe regardless of whether or not the EU approves the visa waiver for Turkey.
- "If visa requirements are lifted completely, each of these persons could buy a cheap plane ticket to any German airport, utter the word 'asylum,' and trigger a years-long judicial process with a good chance of ending in a residency permit." — German analyst Andrew Hammel.
- In their haste to stanch the rush of migrants, European officials effectively allowed Turkey to conflate the two very separate issues of a) uncontrolled migration into Europe and b) an end to visa restrictions for Turkish national.
- "Why should a peaceful, stable, prosperous country like Germany import from some remote corner of some faraway land a violent ethnic conflict which has nothing whatsoever to do with Germany and which 98% Germans do not understand or care about?" — German analyst Andrew Hammel.
- "Democracy, freedom and the rule of law.... For us, these words haveabsolutely no value any longer." — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey
has threatened to renege on a landmark deal to curb illegal migration
to the European Union if the bloc fails to grant visa-free travel to
Europe for Turkey's 78 million citizens by the end of June.
If
Ankara follows through on its threat, it would reopen the floodgates
and allow potentially millions of migrants from Africa, Asia and the
Middle East to flow from Turkey into the European Union.
Under
the terms of the EU-Turkey
deal,
which entered into effect on March 20, Turkey agreed to take back
migrants and refugees who illegally cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey
to Greece. In exchange, the European Union agreed to resettle up to
72,000 Syrian refugees living in Turkey, and pledged up to 6 billion
euros ($6.8 billion) in aid to Turkey during the next four years.
European
officials also promised to restart Turkey's stalled EU membership
talks by the end of July 2016, and to fast-track visa-free access for
Turkish nationals to the Schengen (open-bordered) passport-free zone
by June 30.
Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left) has boasted that he is
proud of blackmailing EU leaders, including European Commission
President Jean-Claude Juncker (right), into granting Turkish
citizens visa-free access to the EU and paying Turkey billions of
euros.
|
To
qualify for the visa waiver, Turkey has until April 30 to meet 72
conditions.
These include: bringing the security features of Turkish passports up
to EU standards; sharing information on forged and fraudulent
documents used to travel to the EU and granting work permits to
non-Syrian migrants in Turkey.
The
European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union,
said it would issue a
report on May 4 on whether Turkey adequately has met all of the
conditions to qualify for visa liberalization.
During
a hearing at the European Parliament on April 21, Marta Cygan, a
director in the Commission's migration and home affairs
unit, revealed that
to date Ankara has satisfied only 35 of the 72 conditions. This
implies that Turkey is unlikely to meet the other 37 conditions by
the April 30 deadline, a window of fewer than ten days.
According
to Turkish officials, however, Turkey is fulfilling all of its
obligations under the EU deal and the onus rests on the European
Union to approve visa liberalization — or else.
Addressing
the Council of Europe in Strasbourg on April 19, Turkish Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu saidthat
Turkey has now reduced the flow of migrants to Greece to an average
of 60 a day, compared to several thousand a day at the height of the
migrant crisis in late 2015. Davutoglu went on to say that this
proves that Turkey has fulfilled its end of the deal and that Ankara
will no longer honor the EU-Turkey deal if the bloc fails to deliver
visa-free travel by June 30.
European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has insisted that
Turkey must meet all 72 conditions for visa-free travel and that the
EU will not water down its criteria. But European officials — under
intense pressure to keep the migrant deal with Turkey alive — will
be tempted to cede to Turkish demands.
EU
Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos on April
20 conceded that
for the EU it is not a question of the number of conditions, but
rather "how quickly the process is going on." He added: "I
believe that at the end, if we continue working like this, most of
the benchmarks will be met."
European
officials alone are to blame for allowing themselves to be
blackmailed in this way. In their haste to stanch the rush of
migrants to Europe, they effectively allowed Turkey to conflate the
two very separate issues of a) uncontrolled migration into Europe and
b) an end to visa restrictions for Turkish nationals.
The
original criteria for the visa waiver were established in
December 2013 — more than two years before the EU-Turkey deal —
by means of the so-called Visa Liberalization Dialogue and the
accompanying Readmission Agreement. In it, Turkey agrees to take back
third-country nationals who, after having transiting through Turkey,
have entered the EU illegally.
By
declaring that the visa waiver conditions are no longer binding
because the flow of migrants to Greece has been reduced, Turkish
officials, negotiating like merchants in Istanbul's Grand Bazaar, are
running circles around the hapless European officials.
Or,
as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently proclaimed:
"The European Union needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the
European Union."
The
European Union now finds itself in a classic Catch-22 situation.
Large numbers of Muslim migrants will flow to Europe regardless of
whether or not the EU approves the visa waiver.
Critics
of visa liberalization fear that millions of Turkish nationals may
end up migrating to Europe. Indeed, many analysts believe that
President Erdogan views the visa waiver as an opportunity to "export"
Turkey's "Kurdish Problem" to Germany.
Bavarian
Finance Minister Markus Söder, for example, worries that
due to Erdogan's persecution of Kurds in Turkey, millions may take
advantage of the visa waver to flee to Germany. "We
are importing an internal Turkish conflict," he warned, adding:
"In the end, fewer migrants may arrive by boat, but more will
arrive by airplane."
"Let's do the math. There are currently 16 million Turkish citizens of Kurdish descent in Turkey. There is a long history of discrimination by Turkish governments against this ethnic minority, including torture, forced displacement, and other repressive measures. The current conservative-nationalist Turkish government is fighting an open war against various Kurdish rebel groups, both inside and outside Turkey.
"This means that under German law as it is currently being applied by the ruling coalition in the real world (not German law on the books), there are probably something like 5-8 million Turkish Kurds who might have a plausible claim for asylum or subsidiary protection. That's just a guess, the real number could be higher, but probably not much lower.
"If visa requirements are lifted completely, each of these persons could buy a cheap plane ticket to any German airport, utter the word 'asylum,' and trigger a years-long judicial process with a good chance of ending in a residency permit."
Hammel
continues:
"There are already 800,000 Kurds living in Germany. As migration researchers know, existing kin networks in a destination country massively increase the likelihood and scope of migration.... As Turkish Kurds are likely to arrive speaking no German and with limited job skills, just like current migrants, where is the extra 60-70 billion euros/year [10 billion euros/year for every one million migrants] going to come from to provide them all with housing, food, welfare, medical care, education and German courses?
And
finally, "the most important, most fundamental, most urgent
question of all":
"Why should a peaceful, stable, prosperous country like Germany import from some remote corner of some faraway land a violent ethnic conflict which has nothing whatsoever to do with Germany and which 98% Germans do not understand or care about?"
Turkish-Kurdish
violence is now commonplace in Germany, which is home to around three
million people of Turkish origin — roughly one in four of whom are
Kurds. German intelligence officials estimate that
about 14,000 of these Kurds are active supporters of the Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), a militant group that has been fighting for
Kurdish independence since 1974.
On
April 10, hundreds of Kurds and Turks clashed in Munich and
dozens fought in Cologne.
Also on April 10, four people were injured when Kurds and
Turks fought in Frankfurt.
On March 27, nearly 40 people were arrested after Kurds attacked a
demonstration of around 600 Turkish protesters in the Bavarian town
of Aschaffenburg.
On
September 11, 2015, dozens of Kurds and Turks clashed in Bielefeld.
On September 10, more than a thousand Kurds and
Turks fought in Berlin.
Also on September 10, several hundred Kurds and Turks fought
in Frankfurt.
On
September 3, more than 100 Kurds and Turks clashed in Remscheid.
On August 17, Kurds attacked a
Turkish mosque in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
In October 2014, hundreds of Kurds and Turks clashed at
the main train station in Munich.
In
an essay for the Financial
Times titled
"The EU Sells Its Soul to Strike a Deal with Turkey,"
columnist Wolfgang Münchau wrote:
"The deal with Turkey is as sordid as anything I have ever seen in modern European politics. On the day that EU leaders signed the deal, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, gave the game away: 'Democracy, freedom and the rule of law.... For us, these words have absolutely no value any longer.' At that point the European Council should have ended the conversation with Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, and sent him home. But instead, they made a deal with him — money and a lot more in return for help with the refugee crisis."
‘No one can lecture Turkey’: EU leaders praise Erdogan’s refugee effort, shrug off rights concerns
German
Chancellor Angela Merkel (C), EU Council President Donald Tusk,
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (R) and his wife Sare (L) pose
during a welcoming ceremony at Nizip refugee camp near Gaziantep,
Turkey, April 23, 2016 © Umit Bektas / Reuters
Top
EU officials toured an asylum seekers’ camp in Turkey, praising
president Erdogan for his efforts in tackling the refugee inflow.
That comes as human rights groups have been particularly vocal in
their criticism of Turkey’s treatment of refugees.
The
delegation of European dignitaries, which included German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, European Council President Donald Tusk and other
officials, came to Turkey in the latest effort to grease the deal
under which Ankara has promised to help Europe deal with the refugee
crisis.
They
visited the camp in Nizip, Gaziantep, close to the Syrian border,
which hosts more than 4,800 refugees, the Anadolu News Agency
reported. Prior to the Saturday visit Merkel said she intended to see
how things on the ground were for the refugees in Turkey.
The
host nation was represented by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu, who personally translated what the refugees were saying to
Merkel, as well as his wife, Turkey’s top EU accession negotiator
Volkan Bozkir and other Turkish officials.
The
European politicians posed with four young women in white ceremonial
dress before shaking hands with five Syrian men and their children.
All other refugees were hidden and journalists prevented from talking
to them.
As
the leaders were leaving the camp, several Syrian children chanted
“Syria and Turkey are together” in Arabic, Anadolu reported. One
of the refugees said: "May
Allah give strength to President Erdogan," referring
to the Turkish president.
The
praises didn’t come from the refugees alone. Speaking at a media
conference during the visit, Tusk said: “Turkey
is the best example for the whole world (on) how we should treat
refugees."
“No
one has the right to lecture Turkey what to do,” Tusk
added.
Merkel
described Turkey’s issuing work permits for Syrian refugees as
a “very
brave step.”
“We
saw that Syrians were embraced [here] as a society,” she
added. "Turkey
is the country that accepted the highest number of refugees. EU needs
to take responsibility as well.”
The
EU pledged to provide 6 billion euros to Turkey in exchange for its
help in stemming down the flow of asylum seekers into Europe from the
Middle East.
Ankara also wants the talks of its EU accession unfrozen
and EU travel restrictions for Turkish citizens reduced by summer.
The
latter appears to be the biggest stumbling block, as the Europeans
want to impose certain legislative conditions on Turkey for such
liberalization to happen. Ankara is adamant in its position.
“We
see the visa exemption as an inseparable, fundamental part of the
EU-Turkey agreement,” Davutoglu
said in the press conference. “Readmission
agreement applies only with visa exemption.”
The
visit comes as EU officials are facing an increasing public outcry at
home over what people perceive as bending to demands from a
government that doesn’t share European values. Merkel saw an 11
percent point drop in approval rating after approving criminal
prosecution of a comedian, who read a crude poem critical of Erdogan
on German national television.
In
the Netherlands a scandal flared after the Turkish consulate in
Rotterdam urged Turkish citizens to report “messages
from people who are insulting our president, the Turkish nation or
Turkey in general.” Dutch
Ambassador in Turkey Cornelis van Rij had an opportunity to discuss
the situation on Friday, while providing explanations about cartoons
depicting Erdogan published in the Netherlands, according to the
Hurriyet Daily News.
Turkey’s
record in tackling refugees is far from clean. This month Amnesty
International reported that the country sends Syrians back to its
war-torn country in their hundreds daily. Earlier rights groups
reported that Turkish border guards were subjecting people fleeing
from Syria to summary executions.
Ankara’s
response to the allegation is denial.
“Some
organizations, such as Amnesty International, have been publishing
reports based on questionable research,” Davutoglu
stated. “Not
a single refugee has been sent back from Turkey to Syria against
their will.”
The
conditions for many refugees are worse than what the European
dignitaries had been shown in Nizip. According to the Syria Relief
Network, a coalition of NGOs, only a third of child refugees from
Syria are going to school in Turkey. Many of those children have to
work instead.
“Their
families may earn only $100 a month, so [the parents] send the
children to work,” Abu
Shihab, Syrian manager of a sweatshop in Gaziantep that employs
Syrian children, told the Guardian.
“It’s
true the camp in Nizip is very nice,” he
added. “But
what about those who live outside the camps?”
The Guardian tows the line
Barack Obama hails Angela Merkel over handling of refugees
US
president to meet Merkel, Hollande, Renzi and Cameron over EU naval
patrols in Libyan waters to stem flow of migrants
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.