“If that [the visa exemption] is not what will happen.no decision and no law in the framework of the readmission agreement will come out of the parliament of the Turkish Republic”, Erdogan said at the close of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul this week.
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The EU has offered Turkey a visa waiver as incentive – along with up to 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) for Syrian refugees and fast-track EU membership talks – to get it to stop migrants leaving for Europe.
“Coming just 24 hours after he and Merkel met during a United Nations conference in Istanbul, the volley caught the government off guard with the chancellor pushing back only on Wednesday after the conclave ended”, the journalist remarks. If there is a result then great.
The latest dispute centers on the EU’s insistence that Turkey narrow its definition of terrorism in its anti-terror law, as one of 72 criteria it needs to comply with to gain visa-free travel for its citizens.
Turkey’s parliament will block a deal with the European Union on migrants if Turks do not gain visa-free access to the bloc, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says.
Erdogan also blamed the European Union for breach of agreement regarding the payment of 3-billion euros to improve conditions of Syrian refugees in Turkey.
European Union leaders are insisting that Turkey abides by 72 conditions before the visa exemption takes place – a demand to change Turkey’s counter-terrorism laws is proving particularly contentious.
“Deporting refugees to a place where they face such conditions is a disgrace”, said Cornelia Ernst, a European lawmaker from Germany, according to the report.
Political columnist Kadri Gursel of Turkey’s Cumhuriyet newspaper and Al-Monitor website warns the migrant deal could be all that is holding EU Turkish relations together. However, a key sticking point of those conditions is Turkey’s strict anti-terror laws, which Europe says must be loosened for the agreement to go ahead.
Domestically, Turkey has been at war with a separatist Kurdish insurgency in the form of the PKK emboldened by wins in Syria.
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In Turkey, pro-government newspapers churn out anti-E.U. columns on a near-daily basis, calling on Erdogan to spurn a “hypocritical” Europe. “He also uses the worldwide fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – Daesh with Arabic initials – as leverage in relations with the US”, Turkish journalist Murat Yetkin writes in his article for Turkish Hurriyet Daily News.
