EU offers Turkey incentives to better tackle refugee crisis

The European Union announced Tuesday it is ready to offer Turkey new incentives to better tackle the Syrian refugee crisis — including money, the easing of visa restrictions for Turkish citizens and better intelligence-sharing — as Turkey warned that 3 million more people would cross into the EU if no comprehensive migration policy is developed.

The EU is caught in a bind. It wants to encourage Turkey to better control its borders, but Ankara is facing international accusations of abusing its Kurdish minority and interfering in the media and justice system. 

The EU made its offer in the form of an action plan under which it would give Turkey up to $1.1 billion to manage the crisis and fund construction of six refugee reception centers in Turkey. In exchange, Turkey would improve its asylum and documentation procedures and tighten security to halt illegal border crossings. Many foreign fighters have used the Turkish border to cross into Syria and join the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

About 2 million refugees from Syria are currently in Turkey, and about 400,000 people have entered the EU via Greece this year so far in small, overcrowded boats from the nearby Turkish coast, overwhelming coast guards and reception facilities. This year, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) registered about 558,000 arrivals by sea, more than double the number from last year. Nearly 3,000 people died making the crossing this year, the IOM reported.

The EU presented its "Draft Action Plan" to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his two-day visit to Belgium, but Turkey has yet to ratify it. The offer came after EU officials held a series of emergency meetings on the ongoing refugee crisis. The meetings resulted in the announcement last month of a mandatory quota system that would redistribute 120,000 refugees from overcrowded shelters to EU member countries.

The plan doesn't address demands Erdogan made earlier Tuesday for Turkey's EU membership process to move ahead more quickly. Nor does it directly address his calls Monday for European backing for the creation of a refugee safe havena no-fly zone around Syria's northern border — two steps Erdogan said were key to ending the refugee crisis.

By accepting and implementing the EU plan, Ankara "would also contribute to accelerate Turkey's fulfillment of the visa liberalization roadmap benchmarks," the EU proposal said, referring to Ankara's long-held desire to smooth European travel for its citizens.

EU officials acknowledged the political sensitivity of the situation. "If we want to cope with this problem, Turkey is absolutely a key partner," European Council President Donald Tusk told EU lawmakers on Tuesday. "I know that this is a very dramatic dilemma," he added. "We have to try to cooperate with Turkey because in fact we have no other options."

During his two-day visit to Brussels, Erdogan warned Europeans that many more people are likely to flee northern Syria. "According to Turkish estimates, another 3 million potential refugees may come from Aleppo [one of Syria’s largest cities] and its neighborhood," Tusk said.

Tusk lashed out at other countries and accused them of failing to fully respect EU asylum and border rules, naming Hungary, Italy, Slovakia and Greece. "We have to respect commonly agreed rules," he said, adding that when countries say they intend to flout the laws "they undermine the essence of solidarity and our community."

Meanwhile in Britain, Home Secretary Theresa May reiterated her view on a mandatory quota system for European countries to accept refugees and said she wouldn't agree — "not in a thousand years" — to a common European migration policy to deal with the thousands of economic migrants and refugees coming to the continent after fleeing war and violence in Syria, Eritrea and Afghanistan.

Al Jazeera and the Associated Press