EU ignoring own involvement in refugee crisis: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Scott Rickard, a former American intelligence linguist in Orlando, to discuss a possible deal between the European Union and Turkey aimed at stemming the flow of asylum seekers pouring into Europe.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What do you make of this proposed deal between EU and Turkey? The European Union leaders are patting themselves on the back for this but there are others who are not so happy?

Rickard: Absolutely. If you look at the actual statistics, it is only 20,000 refugees that Europe is taking and the people that are really lauding the deal are obviously Saudi Arabia, Al Jazeera and Turkish newspapers when in fact the deal is very poor. This is a coercively engineered migration of individuals who are displaced by those same players -Turkey, NATO and their [Persian] Gulf state partners - and this is something that obviously 20,000 in the numbers is very low and Turkey is being paid very handsomely for this.

They are getting over three billion dollars over the next two years to handle the “refugee crisis” when in fact a lot of these refugees were really being used as training camps and … as recruits as well inside of Turkey and when that was failing, that is when Turkey gave up on the individuals that were leaving the war-torn area in Syria that in fact Turkey, NATO and their allied partners were causing.    

Press TV: There is that other concern as well where many are saying that the EU is basically kicking the can further down the hill because it is quite clear that they are not looking at the root causes of this refugee crisis which is their support for those very governments that are funding and supporting terrorist groups like Daesh, like al-Nusra front, etc., etc. So had they given this urgency to the conflict in Syria rather than this refugee crisis, wouldn’t we be in a better position?

Rickard: Absolutely. Obviously they have turned a blind eye to their governments’ involvement in the crisis that was absolutely fabricated by the West and their [Persian] Gulf State allies as well as Turkey. I mean NATO has been complicit in this catastrophe in Syria for now five years, four to five years.

So this is something that they are absolutely ignoring, the elephant in the room. This is something that was caused by Europe and they certainly do not want these refugees nor does Turkey and what they should do is they should cease arming the rebels and they should cease arming the terrorists in the region, get a complete arms embargo, shut it down and start allowing people to go back to the areas in which they came from.

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