Since the beginning of 2015, more than one million migrants have crossed the Aegean Sea to reach Greek shores, with a great many more expected to do the same. There are already 2.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, only 300,000 of them confined to refugee camps. Most of these people have no intention of spending the rest of their lives in Turkey.
On March 18, the EU and Turkey announced a provisional deal to manage the flow of migrants — they hope. Under the deal, migrants arriving in Greece will be sent back to Turkey; in exchange, for every Syrian returned from Greece, one Syrian already in Turkey will be legally resettled in Europe, with the total capped at 72,000. The deportations began today.
Serious doubts remain about the implementation of the agreement, which still faces huge logistical challenges. How do you return tens of thousands of people? Where do you shelter them? How can you keep them in Turkey against their will?
Moreover, the deal as drafted is strictly about Syrians; it says nothing at all about Iraqi or Afghan migrants, who are also fleeing in their thousands to Europe through Turkey.
Beyond the practical, the EU-Turkey deal has raised any number of legal and humanitarian red flags. A number of international organizations and NGOs — including the UN Refugee Agency and Amnesty International — argue that any blanket return of refugees violates international law and the right to claim asylum. Some aid agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders, already have suspended their activities on the Greek islands in order to demonstrate their rejection of the deal.
And then there’s the very real risk the arrangement won’t work anyway. Will the refugees crossing Turkey now — people who have little to lose and everything to gain — be deterred?
If the plan is enforced — and that’s an awfully big ‘if’ — these desperate people may try other routes, via Bulgaria, or across the Black Sea toward Romania and Ukraine. And let’s not forget the Libyan route.
Lastly, there’s a little problem of mutual distrust between Turkey and the EU. Neither side appears to sincerely believe that the other will hold up its part of the deal. The EU has promised to provide 3 billion Euros to Turkey, a sum to be delivered on a project basis in order to help the refugees. Turkey is still asking for double that sum.
Ankara is also trying to use the migrant deal as leverage in its bid to join the EU — which explains why issues like visa-free travel for Turks in the Schengen Area and Turkey’s push to accelerate talks over Turkey’s accession to the EU are being negotiated as part of the refugee crisis talks, even though they have nothing at all to do with this refugee crisis.
Deal or no deal, Turkey is going to have a very hard time managing the presence of millions of Syrian refugees on its territory. The longer they stay, the less likely they are to leave the country one day. That sounds like another destabilizing factor in a country that really doesn’t need more trouble.
It’s disheartening to observe that, five years after the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the EU remains hesitant to draft a mass-resettlement scheme — because any such plan would require massive administrative and financial commitments and, more important, lucid political will. Does Europe believe no humanitarian values are worth upholding anymore, political and economic costs notwithstanding?
A comprehensive resettlement program would be a more humanitarian way to deal with the problem. For one thing, legitimate refugees would know that they would be given safe and legal passage to the West — without risking death in an open boat, or being forced to pay enormous sums to smugglers. A resettlement scheme could offer European governments an opportunity to coordinate migrants’ arrivals and departures. That being said, weeding out potential threats would still remain difficult for the EU.
Canada’s resettlement program, for example, has been managed competently. It has allowed the country to prepare for the actual arrival of refugees — even though the 25,000 people the Trudeau government agreed to receive amount to just a drop in the ocean.
It is not easy to predict when Syria will be safe enough for its people to consider returning home. The refugee crisis, however, was more predictable. Still, the international community — which shares the responsibility for what Syria has become — is failing the test.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Tolga Bilener
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