AFP, GAZIANTEP: Turkey stood its ground over the contentious issue of visa-free travel for its citizens on Saturday, warning German Chancellor Angela Merkel and top EU officials it would stop taking back migrants from Europe if the bloc failed to keep its word. “The issue of the visa waiver is vital for Turkey,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said at a joint news conference with Merkel, European Council head Donald Tusk and European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans.
The leaders were in southeast Turkey for a high-stakes visit aimed at boosting a six-billion-euro ($6.7 billion) deal to return migrants arriving on Greek shores to Turkey. The deal has been plagued by moral and legal concerns.
If Ankara meets its side of the agreement, the European Commission has promised to recommend next month that EU states approve visa-free travel for Turks. But there has been growing unease in Europe over fears that security concerns are being fudged to fast-track Turkey’s application.
Davutoglu said the key to tackling the migrant crisis lies in “closer cooperation, and for us part of that closer cooperation is the visa liberalisation... Those two go hand in hand.”
Merkel replied that she “intends to fulfill the agreement, provided Turkey brings the results” to the table. Ankara must meet 72 conditions to earn the visa waiver and is believed to have fulfilled about half. Asked what Turkey would do if the EU tried to delay the visa part of the accord, Davutoglu said Ankara would stop taking back migrants.
“If that were to happen then the readmission agreement will also not enter into force,” he said.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had already warned at the start of the week that the deal would fall through if the EU did not come through on visas.
Some 325 migrants have been returned to Turkey from the Greek islands since the agreement came into force on March 20, mostly from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The deal has already sharply reduced the number of people crossing from Turkey to Greece, though the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) has said the numbers are “once again ticking up”, possibly as smugglers get more creative.