Minister Omer Celik told CNN Turk on Saturday, that Turks are entitled to a visa waiver to enter the EU since the country has fulfilled all its obligations regarding an EU-Turkey agreement in March 2016.
Turkey hosts more than three million refugees, making it the country with the largest refugee population, according to the European Commission.
But Ankara has taken an increasingly hostile attitude, with president Recep Tayyip Erdogan accusing Germany and the Netherlands of being Nazis. Erdogan said foreigners were treated by the EU the same way as Jews were in the past.
“Now they say readmission. What readmission? Forget about it,” Erdogan complained last month. “You don’t let my minister into the Netherlands. You revoke the landing rights of my foreign minister. You prevent [us] holding meetings at the General Consulate building, which is my land. But after that you’d expect us to do this [re-admit migrants]. That’s not going to happen.”
In March Erdogan told the EU they could “forget about” Turkey re-admitting failed asylum seekers who had reached Europe via Turkey, a key part of the agreement, adding that the EU’s top court was leading a “crusade” against Islam, the BBC reported. The president won a key referendum that has expanded his executive powers, but the EU has criticised the Turkish referendum, saying it would concentrate too much power in the president’s hands.
In the same month, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: “We are currently not applying the readmission agreement, and we are evaluating the refugee deal.” The EU had promised in March 2016 to waive visa requirements for Turks traveling to the EU in exchange for the country taking back migrants from Greece. However, since then the EU has said Ankara has not made sufficient progress on the conditions for liberalization.
Celik has now issued an ultimatum to his EU partners, saying that if they want the have agreement in place, they will have to agree to visa-free travel for Turks by next month.
“If they accept our proposal, the [refugee] deal will be completed in a positive way, otherwise it will come to a standstill,” the minister warned, according to Anadolu news agency.
Celik reminded the EU burocrats of Turkey’s role in stemming the influx and added that Ankara had “rescued” the EU. The number of migrants reaching Greece by sea dropped sharply after the deal was reached, limiting the mass arrival of migrants fleeing hardship and poverty in Africa and the Middle East.
While deal helped to significantly reduce the influx of migrants via Turkey, Ankara has repeatedly used the agreement to threaten the EU with a deluge of “refugees”, despite a $3.3 billion grant from the EU in “refugee assistance”.
In addition, the EU pledged to resettle the same number of Syrian refugees that are sent back to Turkey.