Refugee deal will cement Erdoğan’s control

LETTER FROM ISTANBUL

Refugee deal will cement Erdoğan’s control

Turkey doesn’t have a ‘magic wand’ to wave away the crisis — but it’s the EU’s best shot, and Erdoğan knows it.

By ALEV SCOTT 3/9/16, 5:38 AM CET

http://www.politico.eu/article/refugee-eu-migration-deal-will-cement-erdogans-control/

ISTANBUL — A tentative agreement on refugees with an increasingly desperate EU could help President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan consolidate his power in Turkey. While voters are increasingly polarized by his hardline policies, the prospect of EU visa restrictions being lifted by June could persuade them to grant him executive powers in a new constitution proposed by the governing party.

The Turks drove a hard bargain at Monday’s emergency summit in Brussels, taking European leaders by surprise. They have until their next summit on March 17-18 to respond to Turkey’s demands, which included an additional €3 billion from the EU — on top of €3 billion already pledged — in return for keeping refugees out of Europe.

A key part of the preliminary deal involves a restrictive “one in, one out” policy on refugees, whereby for every non-eligible refugee Turkey takes back from Greece, a Syrian refugee will be resettled from Turkey to an EU member country.

Political opponents and rights groups expressed their dismay at the trade-off: Save the Children decried “the twisted logic behind the proposed deal that requires one person to risk their life at sea in order for another to enjoy safe and legal passage into Europe.”

“A fundamental contradiction lies at the heart of the EU-Turkey deal taking shape,” said Bill Frelick, refugee rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The parties failed to say how individual needs for international protection would be fairly assessed during the rapid-fire mass expulsions they agreed would take place.”

“The AKP has played hard ball with the European Union and won” — Howard Eissenstat, St. Lawrence University

Despite the many Turkish and EU officials present at Monday’s summit, where Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu represented Ankara, the real negotiations were reportedly conducted largely between Erdoğan and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The lifting of visa requirements in particular was seen by many as a huge coup for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).

“The AKP has played hard ball with the European Union and won,” said Howard Eissenstat, a Turkey expert at St. Lawrence University. “The visa agreement, in particular, underlines a narrative of Turkey as having finally ‘arrived’ and is something that previous governments could only have dreamed of achieving.”

“A central part of the AKP’s political brand is that it has allowed Turkey to play what many Turks would see as its ‘rightful role’ on the world stage. This agreement underlines that narrative.”

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Pro-government newspapers in Turkey such as Yeni Şafak and Sabah enthusiastically hailed the news that EU officials had cautiously accepted Turkey’s new terms. Sabah also posited that a deal had not been signed immediately because EU leaders were “unable to agree” to a “Turkish plan” for solving the migrant crisis.

But skeptical Turkish commentators questioned the “one in, one out” policy. One asked on Twitter: “If Syrians & others prefer to wait in Turkey and don’t go [to] Greece to be sent back, how many of them will be resettled in the EU?”

The Financial Times pointed out that the EU has resettled only 3,407 refugees since July, a figure that bodes ill for future resettlement plans.

“The EU is trying so hard not to upset Erdoğan, and that’s a big mistake” — Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party

Political opponents of Turkey’s AKP government have criticized the EU for pandering to Turkey at the cost of refugees from the wider region and potentially from Turkey itself.

Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), whose performance in the June 2015 general elections temporarily robbed the AKP of its 13-year ruling majority, and whose leaders now face jail terms for “terrorist links” to Kurdish militants, has been particularly outspoken.

“The EU is trying so hard not to upset Erdoğan, and that’s a big mistake,” Demirtaş said in an interview Monday. “The world has gone very silent on what’s happening in Turkey, and that’s saddening and also short-sighted.”

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Demirtaş referred to the sieges of Kurdish towns such as Cizre in the southeast of Turkey, where the HDP says hundreds have died and thousands more have fled in recent months due to the ongoing domestic conflict. “If the war in Turkey continues like this, you’re also going to have refugees from Turkey.”

Other critics of the government also raised questions about the recent seizure of media group Zaman, which has been critical of the AKP since 2013. The seizure was immediately condemned by European and American officials, including the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, John Bass, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the news.

But the urgency of the EU’s need to strike a deal with Turkey to alleviate the refugee crisis is expected to take precedence over any concern about threats to the media.

“I think the main criterion for the EU side will be whether the deal in the making with Turkey will be sufficiently reliable on a medium-term basis,” said an Austrian diplomat. She speculated that concerns over the possible illegality of sending back refugees to Turkey from Greece will not scupper the prospective deal. “Stakes are high. I am not sure legal questions will be dominating.”

Ankara insists that its border forces are under huge pressure and that it cannot continue to shoulder the burden almost single-handedly.

In the week leading up to Monday’s summit, Turkey took unprecedented steps to prove its ability to uphold its side of the proposed bargain by accepting refugees — many of them from Afghanistan — sent back by Greek authorities.

“We can confirm that Turkey has started to receive refugees from Greece in line with the readmission agreement previously signed with Greek authorities,” said a Turkish official from the foreign ministry.

A readmission protocol was signed between Turkey and Greece in 2002, but was largely ignored until last week. Questions have been raised by the U.N. and organizations such as Human Rights Watch over the legality of preventing refugees from applying for asylum on EU territory — including in Greek waters, where NATO ships are currently patrolling — and of sending back vulnerable families to Turkey, where many are not given the opportunity to apply formally for refugee status. Syrians have so far only been given “guest” status.

Ankara insists that its border forces are under huge pressure and that it cannot continue to shoulder the burden almost single-handedly.

“We do not have a magic wand,” said the Turkish foreign affairs official. “We have already taken significant steps to halt illegal migration; we modified our visa regimes for some third country citizens, tightened our e-visa regulations; passed a legislation allowing Syrians to work as of January 15.”

This latest piece of legislation, while generally welcomed by Turkish employers, will not necessarily be in the best interests of Syrian refugees forced to remain in Turkey.

Cheap labor

In Kadın Pazarı, a street bazaar in Istanbul’s Fatih district, every shop employs at least one Syrian refugee. Sebahattin, who declined to give his second name, owns a popular shop selling spices, honey and dried fruit from the province of Siirt in eastern Turkey. He employs five Syrians, with whom he communicates in basic Arabic. If he hadn’t hired them, he says, they would probably steal to survive.

“What are these poor people to do?” he asked. “They have wives, children, how will they survive if we do not give them work?”

Although the Turkish authorities only granted Syrians the legal right to work two months ago, Sebahattin claims police turned a blind eye to businesses, like his own, that employ Syrians off the books.

Business owners habitually pay Syrians much less than the Turkish minimum wage, putting the refugees at greater risk of poor working conditions and exploitation.

The risks are not insignificant. Under Turkish employment law, a non-Turk can only be employed if the business already employs five Turks, so employers with a higher foreigner-to-Turk employee ratio faced fines of 10,000 Turkish lira for each illegal worker. Sebahattin was told he would have to pay 10,000 Turkish lira per worker.

But, considering the high cost of paying social security (nearly 40 percent of a monthly wage) and work permit fees, it seems likely Turkish employers will continue to employ Syrians and pay them under the table. Business owners habitually pay Syrians much less than the Turkish minimum wage, and refugees are at greater risk of poor working conditions and exploitation.

Sebahattin admits he pays his Syrian employees much less than he would pay a Turkish worker with similar skills. He calls it the natural outcome of European countries’ refusal to share the burden of the crisis, especially given Turkey’s recent economic downturn.

“What are we meant to do? There is 10 percent unemployment in Turkey already. People will not be happy about cheap Syrian employment, of course. But do you blame me? What is Europe doing, anyway? [They] want us to keep the Syrians, they can’t complain.”

Aside from the consequences to Turkey’s economy and labor market, the most dramatic implications of the migrant deal, for Turks at least, may be political. Erdoğan stands to gain enormously from his apparent success in negotiating a good deal for Turkey on the migration issue. The president is pushing for a constitutional overhaul, but has met resistance from opposition parties, as well as skeptical voters.

“This [deal] comes as President Erdoğan is almost certainly gearing up for a renewed push at constitutional changes that will significantly enhance presidential powers and cement his control over the country,” said Eissenstat. “In general, I think the AKP is in a pretty strong position to push forward at this juncture. Today’s agreement only improves this.”

Alev Scott is the author of the book “Turkish Awakening” (Faber & Faber, 2014) and a freelance writer based in Istanbul. Follow her on Twitter @AlevScott.