On February 28, the Turkish government announced that it would cease to control its land and sea borders, and allow migrants to pass through to Europe. The announcement came shortly after the killing of 34 Turkish soldiers in a Russian-backed airstrike in Idlib on February 27, and is viewed as a Turkish attempt to pressurize the EU and the international community into supporting Ankara’s military operation in Syria.
What began as a “limited” offensive by Bashar Al-Assad’s government and its allied Russian forces to push rebel fighters from their positions in Northern Hama and Southern Idlib in April 2019 is now on its way to becoming the bloodiest chapter in the Syrian war. The regime’s deliberate and devastating campaign to regain one of the last rebel strongholds in the country has razed villages to the ground, displaced approximately 900,000 civilians, and destroyed critical infrastructure, severely limiting provisions of aid and assistance to affected populations.
However, the horrifying levels of violence and destruction have failed to yield any sincere or tangible response from the United Nations (UN) or the European Union (EU), other than calls for all parties to exercise restraint. Though global relief organizations have routinely criticized the international community for its failure to reduce hostilities and protect civilians in Syria, international public forums like the G7 summit last August, or the most recent Munich Security Conference last month barely mentioned the issue. The ongoing election debates in the United States, which have captured the attention of the world, have also seen a fairly limited discussion of the topic. The UN Security Council has held multiple briefings and consultations about the situation in Syria and Idlib, but progress has been extremely slow.
Since 2011, the Syrian crisis has displaced more than 13 million people, making them the largest proportion of the 70.8 million forcibly-displaced people worldwide. According to UN estimates, 3.6 million Syrians are living under temporary protection in neighbouring Turkey as of July 2019, which has made the country a leading global and regional actor with regards to international migration. Due to its direct exposure to the negative consequences of the violence in Idlib, Turkey was forced to open its borders and let people in. The EU however, ramped up its response only in 2015, when approximately 1 million refugees and irregular migrants risked their lives and landed at the gates of Europe at the Greek border.
To control this influx of people from Turkey to the Greek islands, the EU signed the “one-for-one” deal with Turkey in early 2016. Under the agreement, Turkey agreed to take back all new asylum seekers entering Greece from Turkey. In exchange, EU member states promised to increase the resettlement of Syrian refugees residing in Turkey. This number, however, was to be capped at 72,000. The EU also offered multiple incentives to Turkey based on the latter’s long-standing demands, which included renewed dialogue about Turkey’s membership to the Union, accelerated visa liberalisation for Turkish nationals and increased financial support for Turkey’s refugee population.
Over the years, Turkey has threatened to abandon the deal multiple times, over complaints about the EU’s failure to deliver on its promises. Though the bloc pledged €6 billion in financial aid, Turkey has criticized the EU for its slow disbursement of funds and says that it has only received about €1.85 billion. Furthermore, between 2016-2018, only 1,564 Syrians were sent back to Turkey due to slow return procedures in Greece. In return, 12,489 Syrians from Turkey were resettled in EU countries. Germany took in 4,313, the Netherlands 2,608, France 1,401 and Finland 1,002 Syrian refugees. The EU member states Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Denmark did not accept any refugees at all. When the bloc declared the migration crisis to be over, the Greek islands became like a dumping ground for any asylum seekers, who were abandoned in terribly equipped camps on the Lesbos and Samos islands. The EU continued to blame Greek authorities for their incapability to use EU funds efficiently to help asylum seekers, while the Greeks criticized the EU for ignoring their growing humanitarian needs.
The EU’s actions highlight its practice of outsourcing the responsibility of migration control to countries of origin and transit. And until now, the bloc could always count on Erdogan to keep his end of the bargain. However, recent clashes between Turkish-backed rebels and Syrian forces dramatically heightened insecurity in the already fragile province, and significantly raised the stakes for Ankara. Sensing continued indifference by the West regarding Turkey’s plight, it announced that it would no longer stop refugees from going into Europe. While the move definitely caught the world’s attention, whether it will lead to any action by the West to address the root causes of the crisis remains to be seen. Unhappy about Turkey’s “aggressive” move, Greece and Bulgaria immediately closed their doors, leaving thousands of refugees stranded at their borders. Various EU leaders have since then expressed their sympathies for countries affected by Turkey’s tactic, but there seems to be no willingness to re-open discussions about EU’s ability to absorb more people, in order to reduce the burden from countries like Turkey.
Though Turkey and Russia have reached a cease-fire deal for now, it shouldn’t stop the EU from revisiting its policies towards Syria. Erdogan’s move has blatantly exposed the EU’s inability to agree on a common migration policy, and attempts to disregard the urgency of the matter will only lead to more temporary solutions, which in turn will create more humanitarian challenges for the EU. Tensions are already brewing as its borders, as Turkey has deployed approximately 1,000 police officers to its land border with Greece to halt the pushback of refugees back into Turkey.
With the United States slowly making its way out of the Middle East, the EU must find a way to cooperate with Turkey, and reassess its engagement with Russia, which is likely to use this rift as a prime opportunity to divide NATO. Given the UN’s inability to make any real progress on the ground in Syria, previously there have been calls for a combined EU-NATO humanitarian intervention in Idlib, to bring assistance to those displaced by the violence. Unfortunately, given its own internal battles, there appears to be no sincere political will within the bloc to take any meaningful action. Turkey’s border tactic should stir the EU into action, as it is now clear that it cannot deal with the crisis by solely relying on Turkey to open its borders. With thousands of refugees waiting its borders, and perhaps thousands more on the way, the EU must now seriously assess the risks of non-intervention.
Reference List
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Image Source: The New York Times