{"id":28001,"date":"2016-03-11T19:15:39","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T19:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=28001"},"modified":"2016-03-11T19:15:39","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T19:15:39","slug":"turkey-germany-deal-too-clever-by-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/turkey-germany-deal-too-clever-by-half\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey-Germany deal- too clever by half?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you only follow the pro-government media<\/a> \u00a0in Turkey, you could be forgiven for thinking that the tentative migration pact to be considered by the EU leaders next week is a done deal. Confident that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his German chum, Angela Merkel, have cleverly outmanoeuvred the sceptics, their cheerleaders lead you to believe we are almost there.<\/p>\n

In Turkey, the nitty-gritty of the migration deal is incidental. Expectations of a speeded up accession to the EU are pretty low, but it is the prospect of an accelerated visa-free regime for travelling to the EU by June this year, that is exciting the Turkish public.<\/p>\n

One newspaper has even surveyed<\/a> its readers about which Schengen country they would wish to visit first and foremost.<\/p>\n

Amidst the chorus of self-congratulatory commentary, there is very little mention of growing backlash and controversy elsewhere to the proposed deal.<\/p>\n

This is not the first time hopes for a visa-free regime have been raised \u0131n Turkey. It has been on the cards ever since Turkey and the EU reached the Readmission Agreement. \u00a0After an initial resistance, Turkey eventually signed the agreement in 2013, agreeing to a road map of full and effective implementation.<\/p>\n

Many of its requirements and pre-conditions have not yet been fulfilled by Turkey. These include effective control of borders to prevent irregular migration, combatting of international crime in cooperation with member states\u2019 police and judiciary, better data protection and provision of secure travel documents to citizens.<\/p>\n

As for respecting the fundamental rights of the citizens and foreigners, Turkey has clearly backtracked since the signing of the agreement.<\/p>\n

EU Affairs Minister Volkan Bozkir said on Thursday that Turkey would meet its obligations to win visa-free travel to the EU by May 1.<\/p>\n

If only it were as simple as replacing the old passports with biometric new ones!<\/p>\n

Besides, if Mrs Merkel had believed that the visa liberalisation could be swallowed as a bitter pill for the sake of domestic expediency, she was clearly mistaken.<\/p>\n

What is seen as a brilliant vote-winner and a masterplan by the supporters of the AKP government in Turkey have become detested as the worst example of horse-trading in the EU. It has already stoked the European public fears and raised a widespread anti-Turkish sentiment.<\/p>\n

We will see how politically explosive it really is when the three German states of Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, and Saxony-Anhalt hold their elections this weekend.<\/p>\n

In the non-Schengen EU member United Kingdom, migration was already at the centre of the EU membership debate in the run up to the June referendum. Proponents of a British exit from the European Union have now turned the prospect of visa liberalization for Turks into a bitter campaign issue. Those claiming that concessions to Turkey would bolster the case for Brexit are, no longer restricted to a handful of marginal, xenophobic right-wing politicians.<\/p>\n

There are other legal and human rights implications of the proposed deal as a whole and some of them directly concern Turkey.<\/p>\n

Even though Turkey has ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention, it only recognizes European citizens as entitled to refugee status.\u00a0 Refugees and migrants to be returned to Turkey from the EU territory are all non-Europeans and for them, Turkey cannot constitute a safe third country.<\/p>\n

It is also debatable that Turkey fulfills the criteria for being a safe place where \u201clife and liberty are not threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinions\u201d. \u00a0Countless judgements by the European Court of Human Rights against Turkey for human rights violations raise not only legal but also procedural issues for the EU.<\/p>\n

Even if the European Union were to overcome objections over its compromise on human rights and refugee law principles, it would still have to convince one particular member that has been putting the real obstacle on Turkey\u2019s accession since 2009. Greek Cypriot president Nikos Anastasiades has already told the Financial Times<\/a> that he would never accept being forced to consent to the opening of the frozen chapters.<\/p>\n

The likelihood of finding a quick compromise on Turkey\u2019s recognition of Cyprus is very little. As one Greek Cypriot source told me this morning \u201cIf Anastasiades gives in, he is finished as president and the talks between the two sides in Cyprus would simply end in a deadlock\u201d.<\/p>\n

The German-Turkey plan is increasingly looking like a political hot potato. The lauder its defenders boast, the worse their fingers will be burnt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you only follow the pro-government media \u00a0in Turkey, you could be forgiven for thinking that the tentative migration pact to be considered by the EU leaders next week is a done deal. Confident that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his German chum, Angela Merkel, have cleverly outmanoeuvred the sceptics, their cheerleaders lead you to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28001"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28003,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28001\/revisions\/28003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}