A top Turkish official has threatened to stop providing temporary protection for refugees on behalf of the European Union if Turks cannot get visa-free travel soon.
In an interview with the German news Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said that Turkey had already taken “very serious measures” to stop the flow of refugees into Europe, but that it needed a firm date on visa waivers for Turks.
“All that is dependent on the cancellation of the visa requirement for our citizens, which is also an item in the agreement of March 18,” Cavusoglu said, referring to the E.U.-Turkey agreement that allows Greece to deport all “irregular migrants” who arrive after March 20 to Turkey while they wait to apply for asylum. In exchange, E.U. member states would increase resettlement of Syrian refugees living in Turkey and allow visa liberalization for Turkish citizens.
“If visa liberalisation does not follow, we will be forced to back away from the deal on taking back (refugees) and the agreement of March 18,” Cavusoglu added.
Since the deal was brokered, Turkey has faced a series of security issues like the attack at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul and the failed coup attempt earlier this month. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has since led a post-revolt purge, firing upwards of 21,000 teachers suspected of supporting Fethullah Gülen, a U.S.-based cleric who is widely thought to have orchestrated the coup.
Despite EU Deal, Turkey Is Not A Safe Place For RefugeesWorld CREDIT: Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, AP A day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke…thinkprogress.orgHuman rights organizations heavily panned the E.U.-Turkey deal when it was revealed, saying that it violated international law. Organizations were worried that the expedited implementation of the deal would not give asylum seekers and refugees time to process their humanitarian relief claims.
Meanwhile, the Turkish government has been negligent in fulfilling its part of the bargain. Reports from Turkish deportation centers after the implementation of the E.U.-Turkey deal revealed “shocking” conditions where detainees were rarely allowed to leave their cells and people who were often prevented from gaining access to asylum procedures, the German news Spiegel reported. An April Human Rights Watch report described deportations to Turkey as rushed and chaotic, and Amnesty International reported that since the deal, many Syrians in Turkey have been rounded up and deported back to Syria.
Turkey has been one of the frontline countries to deal with people fleeing the Middle East and North Africa for places like Italy and Greece. There was a drop in the number of people crossing some parts of the Mediterranean Sea as a result of the E.U.-Turkey deal. Yet there has been an increase in the number of deaths compared to the same time period as last year. In particular, smugglers are using unseaworthy boats meant to hold a couple dozen people to cram in hundreds of people. That has made 2016 the deadliest year on record so far for migrant deaths on the Mediterranean Sea. At least 3,034 died this year, a number that wasn’t reached until October 2015.