#Turkey: 'EU outsourcing its responsibilities to protect refugees to Turkey'

At the recent extraordinary Council on the migration crisis, EU leaders discussed reinforced co-operation and “a full and speedy implementation of the ‘EU Turkey Action Plan’” announced last November.

The meeting came after several days of rising tensions with countries closing their borders. The Western Balkan Route, taken by many refugees, has been closed off, adding to the enormous pressure already being felt in Greece. Before the summit, diplomatic efforts were ratcheted-up, with European Council President Donald Tusk undertaking a four day whistle-stop tour of Turkey and the Western Balkan countries. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, facing regional elections and domestic resistance to the resettlement of migrants, met with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, as president of the Council, and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu for a six-hour meeting. This week’s Council will finalize the controversial proposals that were put forward on EU-Turkish co-operation.

NATO has stepped up its activity in the Aegean and, in an unprecedented move, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Commissioner Stylianides announced that € 700 million will be dedicated to providing humanitarian support within the EU’s borders over the next three years.

The purpose of NATO's deployment is meant to support FRONTEX’s operations, focused specifically on its efforts to tackle human trafficking and the criminal networks.

Arriving at the summit, it was clear that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu believes he is in a strong negotiating position with the EU, linking Turkish help to Turkish accession:

Turkey has managed to gain many concessions from this deal, including the opening of new chapters on EU accession and the lifting of visa requirements by June 2016. This comes at a time when Turkey’s human rights record is at a low, including last week’s attack on one of its main newspapers, Zaman. This has been condemned by the Commissioner for Europe's neighbourhood relation Johannes Hahn and the EU’s High Representative Federica Mogherini for foreign affairs and security policy, who issued a statement saying that: “Turkey, as a candidate country, needs to respect and promote high democratic standards and practices, including freedom of the media.” In the statement following Monday’s negotiations one line is given to this issue, reading that the “situation of the media in Turkey” was also discussed. To read more about the current situation in Turkey, click here.

So, just two days after this violation of what the High Representative considers to be a “cornerstone of a democratic society”, the question of media freedom has been swept aside in favour of a tawdry deal aimed at stopping migrants reaching the EU’s borders. This shows that the EU is either in denial or is failing to understand that these people are fleeing an ultra-violent conflict that has seen the use of chemical weapons, torture, starvation as a weapon of war and the widespread targeting of civilians.

Turkey, like other countries neighbouring Syria, has been under enormous pressure, with more than 2.5 million refugees within its borders – only 10% of whom reside within refugee camps. It is undoubtedly in need of the 3 billion euro of funding proposed by the EU and the additional 3 billion being proposed. However, the deal of ‘one for one' – where every Syrian readmitted by Turkey from the Greek Islands will be in effect exchanged for another Syrian from Turkey to the EU member state within the framework of existing commitments - is a grubby deal, which is logically incoherent and contravenes the EU’s own laws on asylum.

The deal is logically incoherent, as we know that Europe has only agreed to the resettlement of 160,000 people to date. So it would appear that ‘one for one’ would come to an end once it has reached this ceiling.

The European Council for Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) a pan-European alliance of 90 NGOs protecting and advancing the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and displaced persons, points out that this amounts to little more than the EU outsourcing its responsibilities to protect refugees to Turkey, an immoral move that aims to circumvent its obligations under international and European asylum and human-rights law. In the words of ECRE “trading in people is the dehumanizing expression of a failed European asylum policy and of the lack of solidarity within the EU”.

EU’s legal obligations

The ECRE argues that EU member states have a legal obligation to provide access to fair asylum procedures at their borders. The “one-for-one” proposal runs counter to the right to asylum as guaranteed under Article 18 of the EU Charter on Fundamental Rights.

Article 18 of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights.

The UNHCR’s initial response outlines their concerns saying that an asylum seeker should only returned to a third state, if that country takes responsibility for that person’s asylum application. They also point out that any asylum seeker should be protected from being returned to their country of origin and be offered basic living requirements, such as, shelter, food, access to work and healthcare. We should, of course, remind ourselves that the European Court of Justice in 2011 and the European Court of Human Rights have already judged that Greece has been unable to provide decent conditions for asylum seekers.

Turkey has also set geographical limitations on the application of the Geneva Convention, Turkey excludes non-European refugees. EU law states that third countries can only be considered safe if they have ratified the Convention without geographical limitations.

Tackling the traffic in human beings

The ECRE, agree that it is important “to break the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement in Europe” as the EU-Turkey statement says. This is why ECRE, UNHCR and others have repeatedly called for safe and legal channels for people in need of protection, including issuing humanitarian visas, large-scale resettlement programmes, and application of family reunification policies. The idea that the action plan deal will stop illegal smuggling of people is an illusion. If anything it will create new and possibly more dangerous routes.

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