Refugee
Wrangling: Merkel's Deal with Turkey in Danger of Collapse
The
conflict between Europe and Ankara over visa freedoms for Turkish
citizens is escalating and Chancellor Merkel's refugee deal is in
danger of collapse. Neither side is willing to back down. By SPIEGEL
Staff
May 13, 2016 –
06:02 PM
On Thursday, Turkish
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was standing on a stage in Ankara
raging against the European Union. "Since when are you
controlling Turkey?" he demanded. "Who gave you the order?"
He then accused Brussels of dividing his country. "Do you think
we don't know that?" It sounded as though he was laying the
groundwork for a break with Europe.
Erdogan's fit of
rage is only the most recent escalation in the conflict over German
Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee deal with Turkey. Thus far,
officials in Berlin have been dismissing the Turkish president's
tirades as mere theater. "Erdogan is following the Seehofer
playbook," says one Chancellery official, a reference to the
outspoken governor of Bavaria who has been extremely critical of
Merkel's refugee policies.
But things aren't
looking good for the deal, which the chancellor has declared as the
only proper way to solve the refugee crisis. Indeed, Merkel's
greatest foreign policy project is on the verge of collapsing.
The chancellor still
hopes that Erdogan will stick to the refugee deal. A key element of
that deal is visa-free travel to the EU for Turkish citizens, and
Merkel believes that Erdogan's popularity would take a hit if that
didn't come to pass. That's why she believes that Erdogan will come
around in the end.
Graphic: Plunging
refugee numbers.
But she could be
mistaken. After all, no one aside from the German chancellor appears
to have much interest in the agreement anymore. Erdogan certainly
doesn't: He does not want to make any concessions on his country's
expansive anti-terror laws, the reform of which is one of a long list
of conditions Turkey must meet before the EU will grant visa
freedoms. The Europeans at large, wary of selling out their values to
the autocrat in Ankara, are also deeply skeptical. And in Germany,
Merkel's junior coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats
(SPD), have seized on the deal as a way to finally score some much
needed political points against the powerful chancellor. Even within
Merkel's own conservatives, many are seeing the troubles the deal is
facing as an opportunity to break with the chancellor's disliked
refugee policies.
The SPD, which has
thus far supported Merkel and consistently argued that Turkey's path
into the EU should be kept open, is now increasingly turning its back
on the chancellor. At a joint breakfast attended by SPD government
ministers on Wednesday morning at the Economics Ministry, one of
those present made a plea for a more aggressive position when it
comes to Turkey and the chancellor. "It's Merkel's thing and it
has to remain her thing."
'Our Credibility Is
At Stake'
Thomas Oppermann,
floor leader for the SPD in the German parliament, the Bundestag,
agrees: "We must demand from Angela Merkel that the conditions
are implemented and we should avoid an overly submissive approach to
Erdogan," he says. SPD head Sigmar Gabriel is uninterested in an
open conflict with the chancellor, but he has certainly registered
that Merkel's dealings with Erdogan have not been particularly well
received by German voters.
The SPD's skepticism
initially became apparent during the April scandal surrounding the
insulting poem broadcast by comedian Jan Böhmermann on German public
television. The poem was deeply disrespectful of Erdogan, which led
the Turkish president to file a legal complaint against Böhmermann
under an anachronistic German law that forbids the insulting of
foreign dignitaries. Complaints filed under the law require the
approval of the chancellor to go ahead, and Merkel -- controversially
-- gave the green light. The mood in the SPD has turned against
Erdogan as a consequence of the pressure he has exerted against media
outlets and journalists in Turkey as well as his fight against the
Kurds and the human rights violations that have taken place in
Turkey. SPD members of parliament have been particularly outspoken.
"Our credibility is at stake," says Niels Annen, the SPD
expert for foreign policy issues in parliament. "Compromises are
fine, but we will not sacrifice our credibility."
Members of Merkel's
own party have also been using tough rhetoric. Interior Minister
Thomas de Maizière, of the CDU, received enthusiastic applause at a
meeting of his party's parliamentarians when he demanded that no
concessions be made on the issue of visa freedoms for Turkey. And on
the floor of the Bundestag, a conservative parliamentarian read out
the controversial Böhmermann poem in its entirety -- a further
provocation directed at the Turkish president.
Horst Seehofer, head
of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to the
CDU, is also taking advantage of Merkel's precarious position. "I
was always skeptical as to whether the deal would work," he
says. "The most recent developments have not served to reduce
that skepticism." The situation, he adds, "is becoming
extreme."
In the European
Parliament, which must approve the lifting of visa requirements for
Turkish citizens, delegates don't want to even consider the issue
until Ankara fulfills all 72 of the conditions laid out by the EU --
including the change to Turkey's controversial anti-terror laws. "The
European Parliament will insist on adherence to these requirements.
That also applies to the anti-terror laws," says Parliament
President Martin Schultz, a member of Germany's SPD party. And
Manfred Weber of the CSU, who is floor leader of the center-right
European People's Party, has threatened to lift Turkey's privileged
access to the European market and the simplified visa application
process available to Turkish businesspeople. "These things are
not automatic. If President Erdogan continues to threaten us and
bombard us with insults, then we'll find ourselves at a dead-end,"
says Weber. "Europe is not dependent on Turkey."
'For Us, It's
Terror'
Erdogan's priority
is securing his power domestically and his calculation is a simple
one: He believes that reforming the terror laws as demanded by the EU
would hurt him more than a potential failure of the visa-freedom
deal. The country sees itself under threat from terror to a greater
degree than ever before. In just the last half year, Turkey has
suffered four large attacks in Istanbul and Ankara, resulting in
several dozen deaths. In the southeastern part of the country, hardly
a week goes by without an attack by the banned Kurdish Workers' Party
(PKK). Islamic State has likewise stepped up its attacks on Turkey.
Some 70 rockets have hit the city of Kilis, located on the
Turkish-Syrian border, since January, killing at least 21 people.
The makeshift
refugee camp in Idomeni, Greece
Erdogan cannot
afford to appear weak in the fight against terror. "For you,
it's the refugees, for us, it's terror," says one official in
Ankara. The belief is that counterterrorism policy is more important
to the Turkish population than visa freedoms -- which explains why
Erdogan is prepared to allow the refugee deal to fail should Brussels
remain firm.
Furthermore, the
Turkish president believes he has more negotiating leverage. Ankara
has closely followed the European debate over refugee policy and the
rise of right-wing populist parties in recent months. The president,
say sources close to him, is convinced that the EU will ultimately
back down and grant visa freedoms to the Turks. But if Europe does
remain steadfast, says Elif Özmenek Çarmikli of the Ankara-based
think tank International Strategic Research Organization, the
question is when, not if, Turkey will revoke the refugee deal. To do
so, Erdogan wouldn't even have to put the migrants in buses and drive
them to the border, as he threatened in a conversation with European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker last autumn. It would likely
be enough were the Turkish police and military to cease patrolling
the Turkish west coast and were Turkey to stop taking refugees back
from Greece.
On Wednesday,
Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir went on a goodwill tour in
Strasbourg, visiting with important European parliamentarians like
Martin Schulz, Manfred Weber and Elmar Brok, but the atmosphere was
cool. At Erdogan's behest, Bozkir made it clear just how delicate a
change to the anti-terror laws is in Turkey. But in Brussels, many
believe the laws also provide Erdogan the tools he needs to take
action against disagreeable critics. Several journalists, opposition
politicians and activists have been arrested as suspected terrorists
under provisions of the law. And for the EU, this is the decisive
point. But the European Commission is fully aware how high the hurdle
is for Turkey. "The demand targets the DNA of Erdogan's system,"
says one Commission source.
The most recent
proposal to resolve the conflict has come from Ankara and calls for
extricating the issue of Turkish anti-terror laws from the visa
freedom debate and making the issue a part of Turkey's EU accession
negotiations instead. The suggestion has received some support from
within the European Commission, but Parliament President Schulz
immediately rejected it.
Paying Attention
Currently, officials
are looking into whether the results hoped for from a change to
Turkey's anti-terror laws -- the protection of Kurds, opposition
parliamentarians and journalists -- can be achieved in a different
way. If they can, that would be a path worthy of discussion, say EU
diplomats.
EU negotiators are
paying particularly close attention to a constitutional amendment
that the Turkish parliament intends to pass next week. The change
would make it possible to lift the parliamentary immunity enjoyed by
Turkish lawmakers and it is feared that such a change could
disproportionately affect Kurdish parliamentarians. "Were that
to come, it would have the flavor of a coup d'état," says a
Brussels source.
The tone between
Ankara and Berlin is likely to worsen even further on June 2, when
the German parliament intends to pass a resolution commemorating the
1915 genocide carried out by Turkey on the Armenians. Out of
consideration for the sensitive negotiations with the government in
Ankara, coalition parliamentarians opted not to pursue such a
resolution last year. But now, with Erdogan not showing much interest
in de-escalation, Merkel's conservatives along with the SPD want to
pass the bill in three weeks' time. The draft resolution speaks
clearly of "genocide" and of "planned expulsion and
destruction." Germany's Foreign Ministry is certain that Ankara
will summon the German ambassador to Turkey on the same day the
resolution is passed.
Just how bad things
are looking for the treaty can be seen in the fact that both sides
are preparing for its failure. Erdogan would construe it as a
European conspiracy against Turkey and his confidants are already
fanning the flames of anti-European sentiment. Erdogan adviser Yigit
Bulut says he never actually believed that the treaty with the EU
would work.
More Europe
On the other side,
the European Commission says that, if Turkey ceases patrolling its
coastline and the number of refugees crossing the Aegean increases as
a result, the hotspots on the Greek islands are ready. Because the
Macedonian border would likely remain sealed, Greece would then
become a gigantic refugee camp. Additional funding and assistance for
the Greek administration are on standby for such an eventuality.
Rejected asylum-seekers would then have to be flown home from Greece,
but doing so would require repatriation deals with the source
countries, and such deals currently exist only with some of them.
Syrian refugees, of whom some 2 million are currently living in
Turkey, couldn't be sent back to their war-torn country anyway. They
would remain in the EU.
A failure of the
deal would seriously damage Europe's relations with Turkey for years
to come and could result in a return of the refugee crisis. But the
consequences would be significant for Merkel as well. It would mark
the largest and most significant failure of her time in office in an
area that has long been seen as her greatest strength: foreign
policy.
The opposition in
Turkey is also concerned about the deal's potential failure, even if
the introduction of visa freedoms would be a feather in Erdogan's
cap. The EU's reputation and influence have suffered tremendously in
Turkey in recent years, says Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the
center-left Republican People's Party (CHP). During meetings with
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and SPD head Sigmar
Gabriel this week in Berlin, the Turkish opposition leader warned
against the EU putting too much pressure on Turkey. "That
doesn't help us," he says. Europe should show flexibility on the
visa question, he adds, which could help the EU win back the support
of the Turkish population.
"Visa
liberalization is a beginning," says Kilicdaroglu. "We
don't need less Europe in Turkey. We need more."
By Christiane
Hoffmann, Horand knaup, Peter Müller, Ralf Neukirch, Maximilian Popp
and Christoph Schult
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