Turkey will not have more refugees after EU deal, says the Turkish PM. A recent deal between Turkey and the European Union for curbing the influx of migrants that has plunged Europe into its biggest refugee crisis since the end of World War II does not mean Turkey will get back the refugees from Europe, Turkey’s prime minister has said.
Speaking to journalists on his way back from Brussels, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said there were two ways ahead of the sides.
Davutoğlu said Turkey had chosen to take its relations with the EU to a “new level” against the backdrop of the refugee crisis.
Turkey and the EU sealed a deal on March 18 in Brussels intended to halt illegal migration flows to Europe in return for financial and political rewards for Ankara.
The accord aims to close the main route by which a million migrants and refugees poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before marching north to Germany and Sweden.
Under the deal, Ankara would take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally across the sea. In return, the EU would take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and faster progress in EU membership talks.
Ankara’s central objective — visa-free travel for Turks to Europe by June — would still depend on Turkey meeting 72 long-standing EU criteria.
“We will have completed the necessary criteria for visa-free travel as of May 1,” Davutoğlu told journalists.
Migrants who arrive in Greece from March 20 will be subject to being sent back once they have been registered and their individual asylum claim processed. The returns are to begin on April 4, as would resettlement of Syrian refugees in Europe.
The EU would also accelerate disbursement of 3 billion euros already pledged in support for refugees in Turkey and provide a further 3 billion by 2018. It would help Greece set up a task force of some 4,000 staff, including judges, interpreters, border guards and others to manage each case individually.