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Turkish
ambassador: EU refugee plan ‘unacceptable’
By JANOSCH DELCKER
2/10/16, 8:16 PM CET Updated 2/11/16, 6:24 AM CET
An
EU plan to resettle 250,000 refugees a year from Turkey in return for
Ankara stopping illegal crossings of the Aegean sea is not feasible,
Turkey’s ambassador to the EU said Wednesday.
“Forget
it,” Selim Yenel told the Guardian, “It’s unacceptable.”
In the article,
Yenel dismissed a Dutch-led plan aimed at reducing the influx of
refugees to Europe as unworkable, and warned of a new “tsunami”
of Syrian refugees because of the siege of Aleppo.
Earlier on
Wednesday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu reacted to
international calls for his country to let Syrian refugees, who have
amassed in great numbers at the Turkish-Syrian border, into the
country.
“I find it
hypocritical that some circles are telling Turkey to ‘open your
borders’ while at the same time failing to tell Russia ‘enough is
enough,'” Davutoğlu told reporters during a visit to the
Netherlands, adding, “We will take in Syrians who want to come (to
Turkey), but as a priority we are building a new camp to accommodate
Syrians inside Syria’s borders.”
A surge of refugees
fleeing the city of Aleppo, where more than 500 people have
reportedly been killed in air strikes since early February, prompted
Turkey to close its border last weekend, which led to tens of
thousands of refugees amassing there.
On Monday, German
Chancellor Angela Merkel traveled to Turkey to urge Ankara to fulfill
its commitments under a €3 billion deal agreed with the EU in
November to stop refugees heading to Europe.
Authors:
Janosch Delcker
|
Turkey
dismisses EU plan to resettle refugees in return for sealing sea
route
Ankara’s
ambassador to EU describes plan to take in refugees from Turkey only
if Aegean sea route is closed as unacceptable and infeasible
an Traynor and
Jennifer Rankin in Brussels
Wednesday 10
February 2016 17.22 GMT
European plans to
take in hundreds of thousands of refugees a year directly from Turkey
in return for Ankara closing the borders to further migration, have
been dismissed as unworkable by a senior Turkish official, hampering
the EU’s attempts to get to grips with the crisis.
The official warned
of a new “tsunami” of Syrian refugees hitting Turkey and Europe
as a result of the assault on the northern city of Aleppo being waged
by the Russians and the Syrian regime.
The European
commission, meanwhile, called for the deportation of asylumseekers
from the rest of Europe to Greece and Turkey, the two pivotal
countries bearing the brunt of the influx from the Middle East. The
commission proposal is unlikely to have much impact on the crisis
because deportations to Greece are banned under court rulings while
returns to Turkey would only affect those with little chance of
obtaining asylum.
The Turkish response
to the Dutch-led plan for direct resettlement and the likely minimal
impact of the proposals from Brussels highlighted both the poverty
and confusion of the EU policy responses to the crisis and its
desperation in the quest for answers.
The Dutch, currently
chairing the EU, are pushing a scheme for EU volunteer countries,
including Germany, to take 250,000 refugees a year from Turkey, but
only if Ankara succeeds in closing the Aegean sea routes on which
hundreds of thousands are travelling to Greece.
“Forget it,”
said Selim Yenel, Turkey’s ambassador to the EU. “It’s
unacceptable. And it’s not feasible.”
Germany’s
chancellor, Angela Merkel, went to Ankara earlier this week to try to
engineer a breakthrough with the Turks, but to little evident effect.
In Ankara she spoke publicly for the first time about “resettling”
refugees directly from Turkey.
It was the sixth
time since October that Merkel has negotiated with the Turks, and she
is to meet the Turkish prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, again next
week. Diplomats in Brussels say they have no idea why she went to
Ankara, while the German media are sneering that Merkel sees Turkish
cabinet ministers more often than her own.
“If Turkey is not
engaged, not committed and doesn’t start to deliver … it will be
very difficult to manage the situation,” said Dimitris
Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner in charge of migration. “If they
really want, they can do the job on the ground.”
For Ankara, such
remarks smack of European hypocrisy and arrogance, since Turkey is
already hosting up to three million Syrians. The EU is currently
pressing the Turks to open its southern borders to 70,000 Syrians in
flight from fighting around Aleppo, while simultaneously demanding
that Ankara close the western and northern routes to Europe.
“We’re surprised
that the Europeans should say we should open the borders to Syrians
from Aleppo when we’ve been doing that for five years,” Yenel
said. “It is all unfolding, another tsunami. How are we going to
cope?”
Avramopoulos
unveiled new plans to force Turkey and Greece to take asylum seekers
back from the rest of Europe. Under a readmission agreement with
Ankara from June, the Turks are supposed to take back third-country
nationals who entered the EU via Turkey.
But the scheme would
not apply to Syrians, who are virtually assured of successful asylum
claims in the EU, and perhaps also Iraqis and Afghans. Of the 70,000
who crossed from Turkey to Greece last month, 90% were of those three
nationalities, according to international agencies monitoring the
flows.
Returning asylum
seekers to Greece from elsewhere in the EU has been outlawed by the
European court of justice since 2011 because of “degrading”
conditions. But Avramopoulos demanded that Athens improve the
conditions to facilitate returns to Greece, and gave Athens a month
to deliver.
The proposed
deportations to Greece and Turkey are hamstrung by multiple legal,
humanitarian and political problems, and the necessary procedures
would take a long time to get in place. Neither option offers a quick
fix for an EU increasingly desperate to find a formula for relieving
the migratory pressure.
The commission
issued Athens with a list of instructions to bring Greece into line
with EU norms on refugee policy, including improving living
conditions for asylum seekers and overhauling judicial procedures so
people denied leave to remain have the right to appeal. Reception
centres must ensure adequate staffing, so Greek authorities can deal
with more asylum cases, the commission said.
Greece is under huge
pressure from Berlin and Brussels to stem the flow, with some EU
governments happy to see the country kicked out, at least
temporarily, of the 26-country free-travel Schengen area.
Refugees and
migrants in the open sea between the Turkish coast and the Greek
island of Lesbos on Monday.
Under the so-called
Dublin procedure regulating migration in the EU, asylum seekers can
be sent back to the first EU country they entered. Germany
unilaterally abrogated the Dublin system last September when it
opened its doors unconditionally to Syrians.
While EU governments
insist that Athens observe the Dublin procedure, they also agree that
Dublin is dysfunctional. The commission is to unveil a reform
blueprint for the system next month, triggering yet another bruising
battle between governments.
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