Turkey's ambitions and tensions with Europe

Wolfgang Münchau's EuroIntelligence sketches the current challenge that Tayyip Erdoğan's Turkey poses for the EU. Erdogan uses all means to keep Europe disunited and morally compromised 10/16/2020)

"Erdogan uses all means to keep Europe disunited and morally compromised," he writes. His general characterization of Turkey's policy may come off as a bit melodramatic: "Erdogan inspires Turks and Muslims with a vision of a modern empire stretching from Africa through Europe to Asia. You may not see New Turkey on the map, but it is becoming a reality."

But Erdoğan has been undertaking a more active policy in recent years:

Turkey already has a presence in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. It has military bases in Libya, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Qatar, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Northern Cyprus and Albania. It is militarily engaged in civil wars in Libya and Syria, and now in Azerbaijan against Armenia. This way Turkey is extending its reach into the Caucasus. Once the Turkish military puts its foot down, it creates realities on the ground. The buffer zone in northern Syria has turned de facto into a Turkish administration zone, with Turkish lira and products circulating. There is no need to change border lines, as unity with Turkey is an everyday experience. [my emphasis]

There are even new complications with Israel, including one the outbreak of the latest military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. "Turkey is now blatantly antagonistic toward Israel. There is no reason for Jerusalem to continue to placate it." (Zev Chafets, Israel Must Choose Better in Nagorno-Karabakh Bloomberg Opinion 10/22/2020) But Israel has had good relations with Azerbaijan for a while. Israel gets arms from Azerbaijan and sells them weapons. Also, "The country shares a border with Iran, Israel’s arch enemy. At the very least, that makes Baku an important source for intelligence gathering. There are also reports that it is a potential launching pad for the Israeli air force. That makes Azerbaijan a rare and valuable asset, one that Israel is not going to abandon."

Turkey is currently the country in the world that hosts the largest number of refugees. (Ranking der zehn Länder mit den meisten aufgenommenen anerkannten Flüchtlingen (Stand: Ende 2019) Statista 19.06.2020), 3.6 million as of the end of 2019. Because of the EU's kick-the-can-down-the-road approach to external immigration and especially toward refugees and asylum-seekers, Turkey can use it's refugees as a political club against the EU. As EuroIntelligence recalls:

Erdogan is a master of manipulation and turning arguments upside down. He sent refugees towards the Greek border to remind the EU what they could expect if they crossed his red lines. Turkey has crossed Europe's red lines many times, but there were no consequences. He sends out drilling ships into Greek waters, calls them back just in time for the EU summit, and sends them out again, blaming Greece for not having kept its promises. Who is holding Erdogan accountable for his aggressive acts? Europeans still do not seem to want to see through his tactics. [my emphasis]

Erdoğan plays another cynical game with refugees in Turkey: "Refugees are hostages to his games. They are used as a threat or bargaining chip with the EU. And the men are being trained and sent into his proxy wars in Libya or Azerbaijan." (my emphasis)

As uncomfortable as it may be for EU politicians, the current refugee policy gives Erdoğan leverage that a sensible refugee policy. But, more than five years after the refugee crisis of 2015-16 began, the EU is still sticking with the completely overwhelmed Dublin System for immigration and with Angela Merkel's 2016 arrangement with Turkey to hold refugees in exchange for payments from the EU.

This is one of several ways the EU is experiencing limits on its foreign policy clout that in many ways are self-imposed. In the case of immigration policy, foreign policy deferral to Erdoğan's Turkey is a real part of the price of holding on to the Dublin System. (Jennifer Rankin, Erdoğan puts EU's failure to agree a common migration policy in spotlight Guardian 03/02/2020) Deutsche Welle recently described the situation this way (Seda Serdar, Can the EU-Turkey deal be fixed? ):

Turkey hosts more than 3.5 million refugees, more than any other country in the world. It has so far spent €36.7 billion ($40 billion) on dealing with the refugee crisis. The EU committed €6 billion ($6.5 billion) to help Turkey.

Turkey accuses the EU of making late payments, while the EU alleges that Turkey is not sticking to its end of the deal and loosening security controls on migration routes.

Nevertheless, both sides need each other. The refugee crisis is too big for a single country to cope with on its own — a reality that has led European leaders to signal that financial aid to Turkey could continue beyond the 2016-2019 deal.

Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative (ESI) think tank spoke on the current situation at the Frankfurt Book Fair this month, Der Migrationsforscher Gerald Knaus über sein Buch "Welche Grenzen brauchen wir?" FAZ 10/02/2020:

Knaus notes that the vast majority refugees in Turkey, who are primarily Syrians, mostly seem content to stay in Turkey and don't attempt to move into the EU. The 3.5 million refugees in Turkey are mostly integrated in some way into Turkish society. Most aren't living in overcrowded refugee camps, in other words. And that makes intuitive sense, because many hope to return to Syria at some point and Turkey is a Muslim country. Obviously, there are conflicts, including the hostility of Erdoğan's to Kurdish refugees and the kind of ethnic cleansing which Turkey is enacting in its occupied zone of Syria, displacing Kurds and resettling non-Kurdish Syrians on their land.