Turkey- Is Merkel offering a trade off to solve the refugee crisis

(MENAFN- The Journal Of Turkish Weekly) All eyes turned to Turkey as a refugee transit and host country upon German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Istanbul on Sunday.

Turkey as the country hosts 2072290 registered Syrian refugees according to the UNHCR is an important actor in the crisis. According to BBC News the EU on the other hand has come to see almost 150000 Syrian refugees declare political asylum within its territories since the start of the current conflict in Syria primarily in Germany and Sweden.

At the beginning of this month Turkey and the EU agreed upon a draft action plan to stem the flow of refugees into Europe.

The two main goals of the EU-Turkey action plan are to ensure that refugees who are in Turkey remain there - by improving their living conditions and prospects - and to prevent refugees and irregular migrants from travelling through Turkey en route to the EU. To this end the EU is offering Turkey €3 billion in aid.

Moreover Turkey is expected to put a readmission agreement into action in return for visa exemptions for Turkish citizens planning to visit the Schengen Area. Overall as result of such collaboration it is anticipated that the stalled negotiations on Turkey’s accession to the EU will resume with the opening of new chapters.

This plan was first discussed on October 5 during Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan’s visit to Brussels and soon thereafter Merkel decided to come to Turkey on behalf of the EU to support these efforts with an agenda revolving around four main topics.

According to Voice of America these topics were migration of Syrian refugees to Europe Turkey’s demand for visa exemption acceleration of Turkey-EU relations and lastly participation of Turkish officials in EU summits.

As may have been predicted the item on the top of the agenda was finding a way to prevent Syrian refugees from fleeing to Europe. As Deutsche Welle reported Merkel defined the flow of refugees to Turkey as highly “uncontrolled” and emphasized Turkey’s EU accession process as a carrot in return for providing refugees with better conditions and more camps.

According to Aljazeera Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutolu indicated that a “safe zone” in northern Syria a proposal long championed by Turkey but one which has gained little international traction is badly needed.

Davutolu also asserted that there is a high possibility that several more chapters in Turkey’s EU membership negotiations will be opened and that visa exemption for Turkish citizens will be intensively discussed in 2016.

Elif Özmenek-Çarmkl Director of the Center for Social Studies at USAK indicated that it would not be wrong to say that “migration” will remain at the top of the agenda in Turkey-EU relations for the foreseeable future arguing that even though “Turkish officials claim that Syrian refugees and the EU need to be treated separately and that there is no need for political bribery in order to open up chapters of the acquis both Turkey and the EU have tried to marry a humanitarian issue with their political interests”. In order to open a new page in Turkey-EU relations she argues this kind of marriage needs to be abandoned.

Özmenek-Çarmkl also pointed out that that although the technical evaluation of the readmission agreement and visa exemption might gain speed the framework on the topic that was initially defined in 2013 is still binding. In this context Turkey still needs to fulfill a number of commitments in order to obtain visa exemption in return for enacting the readmission agreement.

Dr. Mustafa Kutlay Director of the Center for EU Studies at USAK noted that the EU and Turkey have different expectations; while the EU wants Turkey to accept and ratify the readmission agreement Turkey wants visa exemptions for its citizens. Kutlay also expressed that the EU does not want Turkish citizens to collectively have the ability to enter the EU visa-free and instead prefers “visa facilitation” which would only ease the process of obtaining a Schengen visa for Turkish citizens. Considering this the trade-off proposed by Merkel on Sunday is not expected to be easy.

As Daily Mail also pointed out both Erdoan and Merkel know that there is no near-term prospect of Turkey joining the EU. Nonetheless it seems that both can still gain something from Sunday’s meeting.