Why the New EU-Turkey Deal on Migrants Won't Work

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Why the New EU-Turkey Deal on Migrants Won't Work

Greece is now scrambling to implement a new deal between European leaders and Ankara that will likely see thousands of migrants and refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other poor and war-torn countries deported back to Turkey.

As Europe's migrant crisis continues unabated, VICE News spoke with international aid and human rights groups who said the deal is both impractical and unethical.

Turkey Isn't a Safe Third Country

The key premise of the new agreement that all "irregular migrants," including asylum seekers, will be sent back to Turkey has been widely criticized by human rights activists, who say the country has a poor track record on refugee rights.

Turkey currently hosts some 2.7 million refugees but is not fully signed up to the UN Refugee Convention and rights groups have documented multiple violations of asylum seekers rights, including forcible returns of Syrian and Afghan refugees.

"The whole deal rests on the assumption that Turkey is a safe-third country, which is not the case," said Gauri Van Gulik, deputy Europe director at Amnesty International.

A case in point, just hours after the deal came into effect at midnight on March 20, Amnesty documented the case of a group of Afghans who said they were forced to sign documents by the Turkish authorities and board a plane back to Kabul.

Under the new agreement, all migrants who arrived after the deadline will technically still have the opportunity to make an asylum claim in Europe. Yet the deal says that their claim can be rejected as "inadmissible" if they have arrived from a "safe-third country" or a "first country" where they receive "sufficient protection."

As the vast majority of migrants have come to Europe via Turkey — which is expected to soon be officially recognized by Greece as a safe country for asylum seekers despite the concerns of rights groups — that effectively means there is likely to be a blanket deportation of all new arrivals.

"[It seems that] rather than assess asylum claim on their merits, they're going to use an inadmissible reasoning, that is return to safe third country, as a loophole to send people back," said Bill Frelick, refugee program director at Human Rights Watch. "It's in keeping with the letter of the law, but not the spirit of it."

No official date has yet been set for the start of deportations, but Greece has said that it expects the agreement to be "fully implemented" from April 4.

"Europe is just closing its eyes to this problem and attempting to outsource it to Turkey," said Gulik.

Greece Is Already Overwhelmed

Around 50,000 migrants, the majority of whom arrived prior to the start of the EU-Turkey deal, are stuck in Greece after the so-called "Balkan Route," used by hundreds of thousands of people to walk through Europe over the last year, was slammed shut earlier this month.

While the Greek government has requested an additional 2,300 European experts — including migration officers, translators, and soldiers — to help with operations, the support has so far been slow to materialize.

The delay has turned official camps on Greek islands, being used to process migrants that arrived after the March 20 deadline for the EU-Turkey deal, into de-facto detention centers.

The system for registering new arrivals was described to VICE News as 'Kafka-esque bullshit'

The system for registering new arrivals at the island facilities was described to VICE News as "Kafka-esque bullshit" with not enough properly trained staff to facilitate the processing of asylum claims. "Dozens of registration interviews have been repeatedly delayed and people are getting more and more frustrated," the anonymous source, who is familiar with official procedures inside the camp, added.

Last week medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)announced it was pulling out of working in the largest of the island camps, Moria, as people were effectively being detained there against their will and where there are now daily protests.

"We made the extremely difficult decision to end our activities in Moria because continuing to work inside would make us complicit in a system we consider to be both unfair and inhumane," said Marie Elisabeth Ingres, MSF head of mission in Greece said in a statement.

"We will not allow our assistance to be instrumentalized for a mass expulsion operation, and we refuse to be part of a system that has no regard for the humanitarian or protection needs of asylum seekers and migrants."

Last week, the UN refugee protection agency (UNHCR) also withdrew some of its services to Moria, including bus transfers that took migrants to the camp.

"Accordingly, and in line with our policy on opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centres on the islands," Melissa Fleming, a UNHCR spokesperson said of the decision. "However, UNHCR will maintain a presence to carry out protection monitoring to ensure that refugee and human rights standards are upheld, and to provide information on the rights and procedures to seek asylum."

Meanwhile, back on mainland Greece, the authorities are struggling to expand a network of camps to accommodate the growing backlog. Currently more than 10,000 people, including thousands of women and children, are living in squalid conditions in Idomeni, an unofficial camp on the Greece-Macedonia border, while another 4,000 or so are camped in a large tent city at the port in Athens.

A separate Europe-wide resettlement program — for asylum seekers who arrived before the deal came into place and whose claims are accepted — is also making painfully slow progress amid bickering between countries over quotas.

'Closed borders are smugglers' gold'

Fahd, from Raqqa in Syria, told VICE News that he had tried to call the relocation Skype hotline to discuss his family's application several times, but no one ever answered the phone. "When I tried to visit the [UNHCR] office in person they just told me they couldn't help and to keep trying the Skype number," he added.

So far less than 1,000 relocations have actually taken place under the scheme, and Poland recently said it was reconsidering its offer to take 7,000 refugees following the terror attacks on Brussels.

"There's not enough information out there for people to be sure what's happening, and not enough ways they can really ask questions and get clarification," said Matt Abud, project director at Internews EU Refugee Response. "People simply don't know what their possibilities are, or if they do hear about options like relocation in the EU or asylum in Greece, they often don't know the conditions or limitations on those options who's eligible, who's not, how long it takes and so on."

It Won't Stop People Coming

Since the deal came into effect more than 3,000 migrants have arrived by boat on the Greek islands. As people are currently unable to move on, and deportations have not yet begun, this means the overall number of migrants stranded in Greece is increasing every day — rising from around 30,000 people to more than 50,000 since Macedonia stopped allowing irregular crossings from Greece last month.

In Idomeni camp multiple migrants told VICE News about smugglers offering to take them across the nearby Greece-Macedonian border, with prices ranging from 200 euros ($227) to 2,500 euros depending on the final destination.

"Closed borders are smugglers' gold," said Lucy Carrigan, senior communications officer for the International Rescue Committee in Greece. "Nobody is saying that it should be a free for all, but we need options that are legal and safe. What we have now is a system that doesn't provide those options, that means these desperate people, who are fleeing war, will look at taking more dangerous measures to reach Europe."

Another route that may be used is mountainous land trek across the Greece-Albania border, followed by either a boat to Italy or a slalom of border crossings through the Balkans.

"Ultimately the current situation will mean payday for smugglers and Europe will not achieve its objective of keeping people out, its a lose-lose," said Amnesty's Gulik.

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Guardian

EU-Turkey refugee deal: staff shortages and rights concerns pose twin threat

Serious concerns have been raised about the viability and legality of the EU-Turkey refugee deal just three days before its implementation, after rights campaigners alleged that Ankara had been deporting hundreds of refugees back to Syria on a daily basis in recent weeks, and the Greek asylum service said it needed more staff to make the deal work.

In a double blow to the deal, the most senior Greek asylum official, Maria Stavropoulou, called for a 20-fold increase in personnel – while Amnesty International alleged that unaccompanied children were among scores of Syrians illegally expelled from Turkey since January. Hours later, the UN refugee agency again called for a halt to the deal unless Turkey could guarantee refugees’ basic rights.

Agreement means all those arriving in Greece from Sunday can expect to be returned to Turkey

The news came as hundreds of people detained on a Greek island fled their camp en masse, and other refugees began to sail from mainland Greece to Italy for the first time since eastern European governments began to block their onward route through the Balkans last month.

Seeking to block off a migration route that brought more than 800,000 refugees to Greece from Turkey last year, European and Turkish leaders are set to implement a deal on Monday that will see almost all asylum seekers deported back to Turkey. The success of the deal rests on both Greece’s ability to process thousands of people in a short space of time, and Turkey’s ability to prove itself a safe country for refugees.

Both factors were called into question on Friday, as the Greek parliament voted to begin deportations on Monday. Stavropoulou said her department did not have enough people to process the claims of the many people who, prior to the deal, would simply have passed through Greece on their way to Germany and other wealthier European countries.

“I’m worried about very many things, but the main worry now is about having the capacity to process all these claims,” she said in an interview with the Guardian.

“We have about 300 staff,” she said. “My estimate is that if we are asked to handle anything like half the flow of last year, then we need to have 20 times more capacity.”

The Greek government has already called for the European countries that have imposed the new deal to send 400 asylum experts to help Greece enact it. Just 30 are due to arrive on Sunday, and Stavropoulou said it would be a struggle to get them into action so quickly.

“The situation is extremely volatile,” she said. “There is an expectation that experts can land in Greece and start working the next day, but to give one example of the kind of practical problem that we are dealing with, there aren’t even enough hotel rooms to fit all the experts.”

To justify the deportation of so many people, the EU has argued that Turkey is a safe country for refugees, a controversial claim that Amnesty International cast into further doubt on Friday. The watchdog released a report alleging that hundreds of Syrians have been forced back to their country in the past few months, undermining their basic right to sanctuary on Turkish soil.

Amnesty researchers in southern Turkey gathered testimonies from Syrians whose relatives have been expelled from the country in contravention of international law, including children without their parents. Commenting on the allegations, John Dalhuisen, Amnesty’s Europe and central Asia director, said: “In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day.

“Far from pressuring Turkey to improve the protection it offers Syrian refugees, the EU is in fact incentivising the opposite.”

The Turkish interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment, but the country’s embassy in the Netherlands later denied Amnesty’s allegations, stating that “no Syrian was ever forced to return to Syria nor were they ever advised or forced to voluntarily return to Syria”.

Turkish officials have responded to similar allegations in the past by maintaining that Turkey respects international refugee law.

The first 500 people to be returned under the deal are set to be deported next week. “On Monday it will begin,” Nikos Xydakis, Greece’s Europe minister, confirmed by phone from parliament. “Not the whole procedure, but the first step.”

Anyone who has applied for asylum in Greece will not be deported until their claims have been processed in the next two weeks, Xydakis said. Deportations in the immediate future will be limited to those have agreed voluntarily to return to Turkey.

Lawyers working on the ground on the Greek islands said it was unclear, however, whether those due to be deported on Monday truly understood their rights, or if those who wanted to apply for asylum were able to make their intentions clear to the Greek police.

As a result, the under-staffed Greek authorities may not be aware of all those who want to claim asylum in Greece, said Lora Pappa, the president of METAdrasi, a charity that provides refugees with legal and humanitarian assistance.

“We don’t know who will be sent back on Sunday: people who really said they didn’t want to apply for asylum, or people who wanted to apply but couldn’t,” Pappa said.

“It’s very difficult for all people to apply. If 1,000 people want to express their will to apply tomorrow, I don’t know if it’s possible for the authorities to process them.”

Two days ago, a METAdrasi lawyer on the island of Chios found that the authorities’ computing system was out of service for several hours.

Stavropoulou is confident that those seeking asylum will be assessed properly, saying that several safeguards had been built into the legislation the Greek parliament adopted on Friday. “We will make sure that between speed and a fair process, we will go for a fair process,” she said.

This week, however, that goal seemed very remote to many of the asylum seekers detained on the island since the deal was first announced two weeks ago. Some 1,600 migrants are kept in a camp meant for 1,100 people, and tensions there on Thursday led to a spate of fighting between frustrated asylum seekers, with three treated for stab wounds. After tensions died down, around half of the detained marched out of the camp on Friday to reach a nearby village, Greek media reported.

Thousands more are stuck on the Greek mainland, after Macedonia shut its border in mid-March. Those with families have largely stayed put, but some are already trying other means of getting to the rest of Europe. On Friday, the UN refugee agency reported that a boat carrying 21 Syrians, Iraqis and Somalians had reached southern Italy – the first to arrive from Greece since the closure of the Macedonian border.

In Turkey, officials in the port of Dikili were preparing on Friday to receive the first batch of deportees next week, but exact details were shrouded in mystery. “We are struggling to understand it ourselves,” said Pırıl Erçoban, the director of Multeci-Der, an NGO based in the area. “Everything is so vague and unclear.”

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Reuters

Protests mount before EU-Turkey migrant deal takes effect

ISTANBUL/ATHENS Migrants protested on a Greek island and rights groups raised legal objections on Friday three days before a disputed EU deal to return rejected asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey was due to go into action, with neither side completely ready.

Hundreds of migrants and refugees on the island of Chios tore through a razor wire fence surrounding their holding center and set off for the port in protest against planned deportation, police said. Police did not immediately intervene.

Clashes broke out at the site late on Thursday, during which windows were smashed and 10 people were injured lightly, a police official said. Some 300 women and children broke out of the camp on Friday carrying their belongings.

"They say that they don’t want to go back to Turkey and that they are afraid for their safety after yesterday's clashes between migrants in the hot spot," a police official said, using the EU term for registration centers that have become detention camps.

The tension on Chios raised the possibility of resistance when the EU-Turkey plan to send back all migrants and refugees who have reached the Greek islands since March 20 goes into effect from Monday.

Although arrivals have slowed, more than 1,900 people have crossed from Turkey to Greece so far this week and a total of 5,622 have been registered since March 20.

The European Union plans to send hundreds of police and migration officers to Greece over the weekend to help carry out the first returns under a deal meant to end the uncontrolled influx of migrants.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have poured into Europe in the last year, most ending up in Germany, triggering a political backlash and pitting EU governments against each other.

However, the U.N. refugee agency and rights group Amnesty International raised objections, with Amnesty accusing Turkey of sending thousands of people trying to flee Syria back into the war-racked country in recent months.

"In their desperation to seal their borders, EU leaders have wilfully ignored the simplest of facts: Turkey is not a safe country for Syrian refugees and is getting less safe by the day," said John Dalhuisen, Amnesty International's director for Europe and Central Asia.

The European Commission said it was investigating the Amnesty charge and would raise the issue with the Turkish authorities, who had promised to apply the principle of non-refoulement under the Brussels pact.

"SERIOUS GAPS"

UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a Geneva news briefing there were still serious legal gaps in both Greece and Turkey and urged all sides to ensure all safeguard were in place before any returns begin.

The Greek parliament was set to adopt a bill amending the country's asylum laws to enable asylum seekers and other migrants to be sent back to so-called safe countries, without explicitly naming Turkey.

Migration Minister Yiannis Mouzalas sought to reassure lawmakers of the ruling left-wing Syriza party that Athens would not be party to violating migrants' human rights.

"A blame-game against our country is starting, that, based on the new agreement we will encroach on human rights," he told parliament. "I assure you – and I believe this will relieve everyone – that we will strictly adhere to human rights procedures as stipulated by international law and the Geneva Convention."

There was no indication that Turkey was about to change its regulations to grant international protection to non-Syrians returned from the Greek islands as stipulated in the EU deal.

The Turkish parliament was in session on Friday but officials said there were nothing on the agenda relating to the migration agreement. It is not due to sit again until Tuesday.

Any new legislation would need to be signed by President Tayyip Erdogan, who is on an official visit to the United States until at least Sunday, although Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu could in theory sign an executive order.

The European Commission continued to put an optimistic face on the implementation plan after EU special envoy Maarten Verwey held talks in Ankara on last-minute preparations.

"Preparations are now well under way to ensure that returns of persons whose asylum claims have been declared inadmissible, and those who have not claimed protection, can start in line with the resettlement of Syrians from Turkey on April 4," Commission spokeswoman Mina Andreeva told a briefing.

Asked about the absence of Turkish guarantees on the treatment of non-Syrians, she said no one who would not benefit from international protection would be returned to Turkey.

Altogether some 53,000 migrants and refugees are trapped in Greece in deteriorating conditions after its northern neighbors closed their border to bar the route northwards to Germany.

The UNHCR said conditions on the islands of Lesbos and Samos and at the Athens port of Piraeus and Idomeni at the border with Macedonia were worsening.

"The risk of panic and injury in these sites and others is real," UNHCR spokeswoman Fleming said.

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