Refugees As Bargaining Chips

On Monday President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited Brussels and the talks he had there with EU leaders did not go unnoticed in the rest of Europe.
The main topic discussed during all his meetings was the Syrian refugee crisis and the best way for Turkey and the EU to cooperate on this issue that keeps making it to the headlines in Europe. Unlike previous Turkey-EU encounters, this time it was Europe who wanted something from Turkey: joint action to stop the flow of refugees from Turkey to the EU.
This put Erdoğan in a position of power he thoroughly enjoyed. He laid claim to the moral high ground by stressing Turkey's financial and humanitarian efforts to host 2 million Syrian refugees and criticized the EU, during and after the meetings, for its lack of an effective policy and the problems it has with handling just 200,000 asylum seekers.
Erdoğan was able to show off because he knew perfectly well that Turkish cooperation is essential for Europe to contain the current crisis. The Turkish president, not surprisingly, used his strong position to table a whole range of demands that should be met by the EU in exchange for more Turkish action. It was clear that this display of moral superiority and tough trading policy did not go down very well with all his counterparts. After his meeting with Erdoğan, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, sent out a tweet with a thinly veiled reference to Turkey: "Some of our neighbors use refugees for dirty business or as political bargaining chips.”
Tusk is right on the haggling. The problem is, however, that what the EU is trying to accomplish in the talks with Turkey is not fundamentally different. Brussels is willing to offer Turkey all kinds of incentives in order to get better cooperation in return. What differs are the methods and the presentation.
So what do both sides have to offer? At the end of Erdoğan's visit, an EU-Turkey high-level working group on migration was launched that should look into all elements of a possible deal. Let's forget about Erdoğan's suggestion to condition the refugee agreement on speeding up Turkey's EU accession process. More commitment to that goal on both sides would definitely be good, but it is not going to happen at this moment in time -- and he knows it. The same goes for Turkey's insistence on European help with setting up the safe no-fly zone along the Turkish-Syrian border. The EU simply does not have the means and political will to do so, especially now with Russian jets making Syrian airspace an extremely dangerous and unpredictable place to safeguard. Both Turkish demands are solely for domestic consumption.
Moving on to the real issues at stake, no doubt part of the package will consist of EU financial aid to help Turkey in offering education and healthcare to Syrian refugees. Doable and acceptable for both sides is also better Turkish-Greek coordination in patrolling the Aegean.
In my view, there are two real sticking points. First, Europe's possible offer to take in a certain number of refugees in exchange for Turkey, allowing the screening of these asylum seekers to take place in new EU centers on Turkish soil, and taking back all those who try to circumvent this new legal route. The idea was floated last weekend (with a figure of 500,000), but seems to be off the table for now. Don't be surprised, though, if a similar plan pops up again. It would diminish the burden on Turkey's shoulders, discourage refugees from putting their lives at risk in trying to reach EU territory, and make life difficult on the smuggling mafia.
The second topic is Turkey's wish to get a commitment from EU member states to speed up the process of EU visa-free travel for Turkish citizens. It is a very sensitive issue in several European countries, but the current emergency situation might indeed be the best opportunity for Turkey to extract some concessions on this point.
If there is any chance of the EU moving on visas we could, contrary to expectation, be in for a quick fix coming out of the working group. The EU would like to have something substantial next week when there is an EU summit. More importantly, good news on visa-free travel would be a gift to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government in the run-up to the Nov. 1 elections.
Let's see who is best at bargaining.

JOOST LAGENDIJK (Cihan/Today's Zaman)