What Erdoğan wants from Europe

By Jacopo Barigazza

More help to deal with refugees, and action on Syria.

Europe has put €1 billion on the table for assistance to Turkey to deal with Syrian refugees, but when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meets EU leaders on Monday he will be looking for more than that.
“We are not asking for help but it would be useful to get help, for example with regard to health, education and social services for these people who are not going back anytime soon,” said Selim Yenel, the Turkish ambassador to the EU, in an interview.

Turkey hosts almost 2 million refugees from Syria, about half of the 4 million who have fled the war there, according to UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency. More refugees now come by sea from Turkey to Greece than across from north Africa to Italy, making it the main port of entry into Europe.
Divided over what to do with the flood of new arrivals, EU leaders last month turned their search for a solution to Turkey. Speaking ahead of an EU summit on September 23, French President François Hollande said that Europe must “work with Turkey” to ensure the refugees “can stay there, find a job, and wait for the situation in Syria to improve.” During an unscheduled visit to Ankara, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised Turkey’s “amazing contribution” to helping resolve the crisis.
Erdoğan is a tricky partner for the Europeans. With Turkey’s bid for EU membership in deep freeze and the Turkish strongman increasingly criticized by the West for his authoritarianism at home, Brussels has limited leverage over Ankara. Turkey’s economy is slowing and its politics are uncertain. Turks head to the polls for the second time this year on November 1 to elect a new government. A long-quiet civil war in southeastern Turkey recently flared up with clashes between government forces and the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. 
The Turkish president will meet Monday separately with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, Council President Donald Tusk, and European Parliament President Martin Schulz. The four leaders are scheduled to have a joint dinner after the sessions.
The meetings come after Tusk’s visit to Turkey at the beginning of last month and after an emergency summit at which EU leaders agreed to “reinforce the dialogue with Turkey at all levels” in order “to strengthen our cooperation on stemming and managing the migratory flows.”

Putin complicates Syria plans

Erdoğan was already planning the Brussels visit to attend an arts festival, Yenel said. During the September 23 migration summit, meetings with top EU leaders were tacked on to his trip.
Yenel called the €1 billion from the EU to help Turkey cope with the refugees “fine,” but made it clear Ankara would like more. The money, he said, “was already allocated” to Turkey as part of the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance program, funds given to states that are in the process of trying to join the EU.
Additional financial aid should “come from other sources and not from sources that have already been assigned to Turkey,” Yenel said.
The leaders will also discuss Syria. In a letter sent to all EU leaders at last month’s summit, the Turkish Premier Ahmet Davutoglu set out proposals for a safe zone — and a no-fly zone — stretching for 80 kilometers into northern Syria.
The proposal envisaged the Free Syrian Army, a group that has defected from the Syrian regime’s armed forces, providing security on the ground and the U.S. setting up a no-fly zone like the one implemented in northern Iraq at the beginning of the 1990s, he said.
But given the new dynamic in Syria — specifically Russian air strikes — this proposal will no longer be at the center of the talks, Yenel said.
“When Mr. Tusk came to Turkey this is what Mr. Erdoğan told him,” Yenel said, “but this was three weeks ago and now the situation has dramatically changed for the worse. Now that the Russians have entered the game, things have changed, we have to re-evaluate everything,”
Yenel said that “it is possible” that Moscow could be a partner, but “there has to be a real discussions and trust. Iran is there, the Russians are there, it is a dangerous mix and I do not know how this can be handled.”

“Let’s be fair. The EU cannot help us [in Syria]. It doesn’t have an army or the expertise” — Selim Yenel, Turkish ambassador to the EU

Yenel rejected the suggestion by some experts on the region that Turkey’s support for a safe zone is only designed to keep the Kurds from ending up with control of the area, where they are fighting against the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
“No, that is not the idea,” Yenel said. “The idea is to have a safe area where people can go back and that would be attractive for them to go back to their countries. The project was not only to provide a safe area but to build towns, infrastructures, housing,” and this could be another point where EU money would be useful.
But he also acknowledged that there is little support outside Paris for the concept of a safe zone. And, more importantly, it “is not Europe that can help us there, it’s the Americans, let’s be fair. The EU cannot help us on the safe zone, it doesn’t have an army or the expertise,” Yenel said.
The meeting is also expected to focus on making progress on visa requirements for Turkish citizens traveling to Europe. “If everything goes well, by 2017 we should be completing the talks and we should be able to have Turkish citizens coming to the EU without a visa,” Yenel said.