By Halil Gürhanlı

April 7, 2016

With the refugee deal with EU, the regime in Turkey earns the silence of its European critics as the country proceeds towards complete authoritarianism. The EU leaders get to have their cake and eat it too, outsourcing gate-keeping while maintaining the moral upper-hand.  However, this is a joint “achievement” gained at the expense of millions of Syrian refugees. It tarnishes EU’s status as a normative power. Meanwhile, Turkey is also a loser, as it will not be politically and financially compensated for carrying the refugee burden.

By Halil Gürhanlı (vol. 7, no. 23 of the Turkey Analyst)

The Turkish government continues to refuse to grant Syrians who have taken shelter in Turkey refugee status in line with international principles. The Temporary Protection Directive, adopted on October 22, 2014, provides a comparatively more solid legal status for ‘temporarily protected’ Syrians, but it still falls short of granting the refugees their rights in legal terms. The new legislation effectively accords unlimited freedom to the government agencies to decide over the lives and future of two million Syrian refugees. This effectively means that the refugees will have to dance to the Turkish government’s tune if they wish to remain at a relatively safe distance from the horrors of civil war.