But a senior European Union official involved in negotiations with Turkey said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung report, which detailed six new refugee camps for two million people, was “not in line with what we have been discussing”. And no permanent solution to the Syrian war is feasible without Turkey’s cooperation. The issue is compounded by European doubts about Erdogan himself, a leader who’s presided over a deterioration in almost every gauge of Turkey’s democracy since coming to power in 2002.
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But provided the new convincing in Syria – specially Russian sky protests – this pitch will not need to stay the heart of a given discussions, Yenel said.
“Work on a structured EU-wide approach to resettlement shall be stepped up”, the commission said, as well as tightening existing European schemes to “enable refugees in Turkey to enter the EU in an orderly manner“.
Most are headed for the wealthier countries of northern Europe and Germany, which has welcomed the refugees, now predicts it could receive up to 1.5 million asylum seekers in 2015. About 400,000 people have reached Greece so far this year, most in small overcrowded boats from the nearby Turkish coast.
Russian Federation Tuesday rebuffed calls for a no-fly zone over Syria, saying it would breach the sovereignty of Syria’s government under President Bashar al-Assad, who’s supported by Moscow.
It is expected that these measures will help to stop illegal migrants carriers. “If we want to cope with this problem, Turkey is absolutely a key partner”, European Council President Donald Tusk told EU lawmakers Tuesday. “According to Turkish estimates, another 3 million potential refugees may come from Aleppo and its neighborhoods”, he added.
An estimated 250,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war since it began in 2011 and millions of people displaced.
The EU-Turkey action plan states that a large part of the substantial increase in the fund for the Syrian crisis will also be earmarked for Turkey, and organisations on the ground will continue to provide humanitarian aid.
Hungary last month was among four Eastern European countries to vote against the EU relocation plan.
Migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos will travel to Turkey next week. There are hopes that first steps could be taken before a summit of European Union leaders on October 15-16, but Turkey is not expected to make major decisions ahead of November 1 parliamentary elections. During the final term of his 12-year rule as prime minister and once he became president, the government started clamping down on the opposition, jailing many of Mr. Erdogan’s rivals including businessmen and journalists for alleged coup attempts.
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While Slovakia has made clear it will only accept Christian refugees and not Muslims, Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban has described the influx of refugees as a threat to Europe’s “Christian roots” and responded to the crisis by erecting a fence on its southern border with Serbia.
