In addition to visa-free travel, it includes billions of euros in aid and accelerated talks on Turkey’s stalled bid for European Union membership, but ties have been strained by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s massive crackdown after a failed coup last month.
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Europe “will not be blackmailed” into granting Turkey visa-free travel by the threat to back out of a deal on refugees, Germany’s Vice Chancellor has said.
He said: “The fact that the right to free speech, to assemble and to demonstrate apply in Austria is the exact thing that makes it different from the situation in Turkey”.
Ever since the Turkish coup attempt two weeks ago, the number of migrants crossing the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast into Greece has doubled relative to the preceding period.
Tension has risen between Turkey and the European Union over alleged large-scale human rights abuses and other issues following the coup attempt, prompting concern that the migrant deal could collapse.
“I would like to say that there had been too little understanding in Europe on what challenges this has caused to the democratic institutions and the state institutions of Turkey”, he said, adding that this needed to be dealt with.
Austria’s foreign minister, long skeptical about the Turkey deal, told German weekly Der Spiegel that “we can not sit back and hope that the deal with Turkey holds”. Oettinger said: “The death penalty is irreconcilable with our order of values and our treaties”.
“The EU deal is the latest in a long line of policies that go against the values and the principles that enable assistance to be provided”, Jerome Oberreit, the secretary general of MSF, said at the time.
The conditions, he said, “are known to all sides involved”.
Turkey coup: Some 18,000 people have been detained in the crackdown.
As part of the deal, Brussels promised to introduce visa liberalization for Turkish citizens.
Fleeing war and economic devastation, more than a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe by boat in 2015, according to the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR).
“A few days ago Erdoğan said: “No matter how uncouth, how merciless, how unscrupulous Western countries act, they have no chance of keeping the migration flows under control.’ In short, he sees mass migration as a political weapon to put Europe under pressure”.
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Ankara’s apparent ultimatum has also sparked anger in Germany where the leader of the liberal Free Democratic Party, Christian Lindner, has demanded the Turkish ambassador to Berlin be summoned to explain his government’s comments.
