EU trying to export refugee crisis back to Turkey: Pundit

Press TV has interviewed Ian Williams, a senior analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus from New York, about a deal between the European Union and Turkey on the fate of Syrian refugees stranded in Europe.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: From sounds of it no one wants these refugees.

Williams: And nobody seems to be living up to their legal responsibilities either between the European Union and Greece and Turkey, lots of international law and conventions are being violated by those governments.

Press TV: Where do we go often from here? We’re set to start seeing this Turkey-EU deal being put into action now.

Williams: The human rights groups, you mentioned, have testified that Turkey has actually been throwing some of these refugees back across the border into the maelstrom in Syria and that’s increasingly unsafe. And as we know there’s a fairly sordid deal involved here that the European Union has agreed to close its eyes to President Erdogan’s crackdown on the press and opposition in Turkey in return for his cooperation with the refugees. So, they’re actually compounding their illegalities, because they’re not just ignoring international law on refugees and the right to asylum, they’re also ignoring longstanding European Union policy about democracy and civil rights in Turkey.

Press TV: Many people are concerned of what they see as divisions within Europe. At this point obviously Greece is shouldering a lot of the burden, because it’s a country recovering apparently from its economic recession itself. So how much more can Europe take at this point?

Williams: Europe could take a lot more, but Europe is determined not to. Europe has tried to isolate the problem in Greece and further to collaborate with Greece in exporting the problem back to Turkey... if the great powers of the world got their act together they would actually be able to stop the conflict and negotiate proper terms in Syria, so the whole thing is really a condemnation of international policy and of what passes for world governance nowadays.

Press TV: So do you think that Syria peace talks will go ahead with more urgency in essence to try to solve this issue?

Williams: It certainly puts pressure on the European Union to deliver, but they are exporting the problem back to Turkey and Turkey is of course a key player in whatever solution emerges in Syria. But unfortunately, the behavior of President Erdogan in the last few years has been increasingly erratic on every level. And it’s difficult to see what he’s trying to do, what he’s trying to achieve in any of these various fields. For long time, he did a lot of quite credit worthy things in the region, but more and more his policies are getting erratic and it has consequences of course like this, the deal with Europe is a sordid underhanded deal and the Europeans are equally culpable with it.

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