Erdogan threatens to flood Europe with refugees

It's stupid how we spend a decade destabilizing a region, and then aren't willing to deal with the humanitarian consequences of our actions.

Start a war? Be ready to deal with the refugees displaced by it.

It's not trivial to enforce a maritime border. What do you do if people come on boats? You can pick them up from the boats, but Turkey won't take them back. What then?

The EU paid 6 billion to help Turkey with its migration crisis[1]. In addition to this, they also receive money from other funds like Horizon2020, funding for industry innovation, as part of the pathway of Turkeys to get full EU membership.

This is crazy. I am not even against paying for facilities for refugees outside of the EU or give grants for research. We have a long history of cultural exchange dating back to the eastern roman empire and before.

What a joke EU politics has become, no majority is in favor of Turkey joining the union, only the large diaspora of Turks. The Brexit is a mistake, The Donald is an idiot, but at least they made people get out of their sofa and vote instead of this semi-democracy we call the EU.

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/news_corner/m...

Well they can solve a large portion of the refugee crises by not allowing corrupt rulers of many of the countries that refugees come from put money in western banking accounts and properties.

>Europe could too, with proper organisation

Aye, I hope so too.

However, if Erdogan follows through, he may just send the IS folks through first, and then tip off the tabloid press about how the EU is compromising its security by letting in terrorists.

Cue the backlash and outrage... and then he opens the floodgates.

For Turkey, that’s 4,5% of its population.

I wouldn’t call that “trifling”.

The EU pays Turkey a lot of money. In return Turkey patrols its coastline to prevent migrants from boating across to the Greek islands. They can still get in by making the longer trip from north africa. Numbers of migrants are down since 2015 so perhaps it has been working?

What opwieurposiu said. Also, here are some resources about the tactic Erdogan is using:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugees_as_weapons

https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501704369/weap...

Turkey has some 4 million [0] refugees (overwhelmingly Syrian [1]) which the EU supports financially, as well as helping to pay for coastal patrols. Migrants seeking to get to the eastern Mediterranean are instead returned to Turkey. Erdogan states, "if you try to frame our operation [in northern Syria] as an invasion, our task is simple: we will open the doors and send 3.6 million migrants to you" [2]. I can't find any specifics but presumably he's referring to Turkey ceasing to intercept and warehouse refugees who would otherwise head straight to Europe.

[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/news_corner/m...

[1]: https://ec.europa.eu/echo/where/europe/turkey_en

[2]: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-...

(ninja'ed) Linked worked on mobile (sans javascript) https://www.apnews.com/66a0b9af4a494b28b99dfbd430d244ac

Hope that helps.

Additional reporting and interesting quote from https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/19334/turkey-threatens-...

"..in his speech, Erdogan accused Europe of failing to keep its promises..... and that only half of the €6 billion pledged by the EU under the agreement had arrived. The claim was rejected by European Commission spokesperson, Natasha Bertaud, who said that €5.6 billion had been provided and the rest was "due to be allocated shortly." A reminder that this impacts fellow humans https://www.savethechildren.net/news/save-children-statement...

> Hindsight being 20/20, and all, the US withdrawing from Iraq (with some European pressure to do so) caused a lot of instability in the region.

We, the US invading Iraq and then immediately upon occupying it throwing out all experience of past occupations and disbanding the existing security services summarily caused a lot of instability. Without it, the group that subsequently became (despite no previous affiliation with, and some actual tension with, al-Qaeda) “al-Qaeda in Iraq”, then when they outgrew the need for the al-Qaeda brand “the Islamic State in Iraq” and later became “the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” (or, in the more common translation in many official circles, “...Iraq and the Levant”, hence why you sometimes see government sources referring to ISIL) after remerging with a splinter group that broke off to join in the Syrian civil war, and finally dropped all geographic references to be “the Islamic State”, never would have been anything other than a minor Iraqi internal opposition group.

> I doubt that ISIS would have been much of a concern without a power void in Iraq

I doubt that ISIS would even have existed without the US invasion of Iraq.

I, and plenty others, saw this coming without hindsight.