European leaders seek refugee deal with Turkey

By Matthew Karnitschnig

BERLIN — Europe’s leaders, unnerved by the caustic tone between capitals over quotas, are redoubling efforts to address the refugee issue at what many see as the source: Turkey.
Germany, Italy and France have led a behind-the-scenes push in recent days to strike a deal with Ankara to improve conditions for the 2.2 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey. The issue is expected to top the agenda when EU leaders meet at an emergency summit Wednesday on the refugee crisis.

The Turkey initiative comes as Europe has struggled to find an agreement on allocating refugees streaming into the EU. Interior ministers now appear likely to reach a deal for distributing about 120,000 this week, but with more than one million refugees expected in Germany alone this year, the move will do little to resolve the broader crisis.
Europe must “work with Turkey” to ensure the refugees “can stay there, find a job, and wait for the situation in Syria to improve,” French President François Hollande said after meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi on Thursday.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier made an unscheduled trip to Ankara on Friday to discuss the crisis with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other senior officials. His goal, he said, was to prevent further “chaos” on Europe’s borders.
Europeans underestimate the key role Syria’s neighbors have played in dealing with the crisis and that’s “especially true for Turkey,” Steinmeier said, praising Ankara’s “amazing contribution.”
European Parlament President Martin Schulz confirmed the POLITICO report in an interview with German radio on Monday morning.
“The summit should be less focused on allocation than on another issue that is hardly being discussed, namely financial aid for the countries in which there are one, two, three million refugees sitting in refugee camps,” Schulz said. “Providing them financial support is very sensible because otherwise there can be no doubt that another large group of refugees will take to the road.”
Other countries in the region, including Lebanon and Jordan, have also taken in huge numbers of refugees but are much smaller than Turkey and don’t have the capacity to do more. Therefore, Europe is focusing its diplomatic efforts on encouraging Ankara to do more.
Most of the Syrians coming to Europe do so via Turkey, where many live in what the United Nations has described as “abject poverty.” The deteriorating conditions in Turkey as well as in neighboring Jordan and Lebanon have prompted many to set out for Europe, often risking their lives to do so.
Europe is offering Turkey a significant increase in financial aid as it seeks to encourage it to take on more of the burden. The European Commission said last week that it would more than double its aid to Turkey to up to €1 billion.
The money will “help Turkey to deal with this challenge and give people a perspective to stay in the region in order to return back into their home region, home towns, as soon as this is possible,” said Johannes Hahn, European commissioner for neighborhood policy, during a visit Saturday to a refugee camp in Macedonia, AFP reported.
But officials say Turkey is looking for an even larger commitment with the crisis in Syria worsening and the prospect of refugees returning home anytime soon remote. European offiicals have signaled to Ankara that they would be willing to fund the building of schools and other infrastructure to ease the burden.
Over the past five years, Turkey has spent about $8 billion to help the refugees. Even so, the huge influx has strained its resources as well as those of the international organizations active in the region. The UN’s World Food Program recently cut funding for 1.3 million refugees in the region by half due to financial constraints.