Their visit comes one month after the European Union clinched a deal with Turkey to help curb the flow of migrants into Europe, which saw Ankara accept the return of migrants from Greece in exchange for visa-free travel for its citizens. “She’s demonstrated real political and moral leadership”, Obama said in an interview published Saturday with German daily Bild.
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Merkel is scheduled to visit a refugee camp in Turkey on Saturday, AP says. While Turkey has upgraded human rights protections for Syrians returned from Greece, it has yet to offer the same guarantees to the much more numerous Afghans, Iraqis and Eritreans who are being returned from Greece and could qualify for the same protection under global asylum laws.
In her acceptance speech, the German leader said the migration crisis “touches our European values in a special way”.
” Pretending all is well for refugees in Turkey blindly denies shootings at refugees, returns of Syrians to Syria and more, all in the dogged determination to keep people out of Europe”, she said.
But the US president was also stressing the need to uphold human rights.
At the end of a Netherlands-Germany summit, Merkel’s Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte did raise tensions with Turkey again when he said his ambassador in Ankara would demand clarifications following reports that a Turkish consulate in the Netherlands was urging the Turkish community to report insults to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the nation.
More than a million refugees and other migrants, who arrived on the Greek islands in smugglers’ boats from Turkey, passed through Greece to Macedonia and other countries on the western Balkan corridor since the beginning of 2015, on their way north. Obama added: “As the agreement is implemented, it will be essential that migrants are treated properly and that human rights are upheld”. “Welcome to Turkey, the world’s largest refugee hosting country”, read a huge banner hanging over the entrance to the camp, which hosts some 5,000 people, including 1,900 children, in row upon row of white and beige prefabricated houses.
Calling for an immediate halt to the implementation of the deal, Turkey has been blasted over detention of asylum-seekers, serious shortcomings in asylum procedures amid chaos on the ground. Angela Merkel apologises for expressing her personal views about a comedian who could face charges for insulting the Turkish President, while the German public vents its anger over her handling of the case.
“There is no photo-op that can obscure the deep flaws in the EU-Turkey deal”, said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International’s director for Europe and Central Asia.
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“It took the arrival of refugees on our territory in big numbers to recognize the scale and significance of this problem”, she said, referring to the migrant crisis that gripped Europe a year ago and threatened some of the EU’s basic principles such as the free movement of people.
