Erdogan playing migrant card very well: Commentator
Turkey has decided to reconsider its controversial refugee deal with the European Union after the Greek Supreme Court refused to return the eight suspects allegedly linked to the country’s failed July coup.
A political commentator believes Turkey’s response is “quite threatening in terms of maintaining peace within the EU," adding that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has played this “migrant card” very well over the past year.
“I think that Erdogan is flexing his muscles obviously and quite brazenly and pointing out that if you do not like the way I am running Turkey, just remember the position that I hold with this card,” Daniel Patrick Welch told Press TV in an interview on Friday.
He also described Erdogan's use of the migrant card as a “very cynical move,” arguing that it is playing to the “outright racist fears” in Europe about the refugees coming from countries that are being bombed by European states.
The commentator went on to say that it is “ridiculous” that the Europeans are trying to keep people out when they have created the refugee crisis in the first place, noting that “Erdogan is keeping the key to the door and using it as a diplomatic weapon."
Elsewhere in his remarks, Welch stated that the Greek government’s concern about the fate of the eight suspects is “legitimate” given Erdogan’s “fanatical response” to the coup with all the purging and the mass arrests, which were “very scary and undemocratic for a lot of observers.”
However, he said, the “European polity is so obsessed with the migrant issue that they might try to force Greece to back down, because they're desperate to address this problem because the far-right has made it such an impossible political issue that they have to solve it on some level."
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