Breakthrough on Syria refugee crisis unlikely as EU sends emissary to Ankara
European-Turkish contacts are intensifying in an effort to stave off a disastrous refugee crisis on Turkey's border with Greece that could have repercussions across Europe.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell was due to arrive in Ankara today, part of a diplomatic effort to defuse a crisis brewing on the Turkish-Greek border that could result in a repeat of the mass influx of migrants in 2015 that triggered a sharp populist backlash across Europe.
A senior Western official who briefed Al-Monitor on the EU’s deliberations said, “There’s an intense effort by the EU Commission and the EU Presidential Council to see what can be done and put something together by the end of the week that would basically stabilize the Turkish-European relationship without resolving the struggles in Syria that actually I don’t see how Europe could do.”
Early signs bode ill for a breakthrough. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had spurned an EU offer of one billion euros in extra aid for migrants in Turkey. “We don’t want this money,” he said today. “No one has the right to mock Turkey’s dignity.”
Erdogan warned that “millions” of migrants would soon head to Europe because the EU had failed to honor a 2016 agreement whereby the bloc pledged six billion euros to support the nearly four million refugees currently living in Turkey. Erdogan said Turkey has spent 40 billion dollars on the refugees so far.
