Turkey pours cold water on EU plan to manage flow of people across borders
Turkey demands more aid from EU
BRUSSELS Turkey’ s president derided Europe on Friday for not taking in more refugees—a dose of cold water for a European Union plan to give new aid and concessions to Ankara in exchange for stemming the unprecedented flow of people across borders.
EU leaders meeting at a summit in Brussels into the early hours of Friday agreed to give “political support” for an action plan for Turkey to help it manage its refugee emergency, including easier access to EU visas for Turkish citizens and EU membership talks. The hard part, though, is persuading Turkey to sign on, and raising money to make it work.
The EU package for Turkey would involve at least $ 3.4 billion US in aid, officials said. But member countries have been slow to offer money for the refugee crisis overall, and are divided over how much to help migrants and how much to help Turkey.
Many issues remain to be resolved, and discussions will continue, with Turkey’s EU minister, Beril Dedeoglu, visiting Brussels on Tuesday for talks with top budget, economy and membership officials.
In a speech on Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not address the refugee offer, but accused the EU of being insincere about Turkey’s membership.
“We are far ahead of most EU countries but unfortunately, they are not sincere,” Erdogan said.
He sustained his anti- western rhetoric, taking a jibe at those who suggested German Chancellor Angela Merkel for the Nobel Peace Prize for opening Germany to so many refugees this year.
“We have 2.5 million refugees, no one cares,” Erdogan said.
Turkey hosts more refugees than any other country in the world. Hundreds of thousands are sheltered in the refugee camps, but many more are left to fend for themselves. Europe has seen 600,000 new arrivals this year.
After a decade of membership talks where the EU had the upper hand, now the EU is in a position of needing Turkey’s help to ease the refugee crisis. But EU leaders are concerned about moves by Erdogan toward the Kurdish minority and the media and justice system. Erdogan’s government has been pushing for a long time for looser visa rules, which would be a vote- getter for his party in Nov. 1 elections
French President François Hollande said he “insisted that if there is a liberalization of visas with Turkey ... it should be on extremely specific, controlled terms.”
Merkel, who is going to Turkey on Sunday, said the plan would mean that “on the one hand, Turkey enters into commitments with regard to the handling of refugees within its own country and, on the other hand, that we are ready to share the burden with Turkey.”
“We still must clarify the timelines, what should happen, when, how reliable our promises of support are, how reliable Turkey ’s promises of regulation are,” she said early Friday.