EU-Turkey refugee deal gives Erdogan case of 'political amnesia'

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a recent bout of political amnesia that sent a strong signal that the refugee deal reached March 18 between outgoing Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the European Union (EU) is under threat from Ankara. What brought on this spell and how does it put strain on the deal?

Erdogan’s problem is not with the refugee deal itself, under which Ankara agreed to re-admit Syrian refugees who reach the EU via Turkey. Rather, what bothers him is a related issue — an accord envisaging visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in the EU’s Schengen zone that Davutoglu signed on Dec. 16, 2013, while he was foreign minister and Erdogan prime minister. It was Davutoglu who linked the visa agreement to the refugee deal, and it is this connection that contributed to the amnesia threatening the refugee deal.

Claiming to be driving a hard bargain in the refugee negotiations, Davutoglu insisted on attaching unrelated issues to the deal. One of them was the opening of two new chapters in Turkey’s EU accession talks, which the two sides pretend are ongoing. The other was an agreement to bring forward the implementation date of the visa waiver program from October this year to June. If everything had gone smoothly, Turkish citizens would be eligible for visa-free travel to Europe four months earlier than expected, and credit would go to Davutoglu as the winner of the “tough bargaining.”

Yes, the EU agreed to move the implementation date forward, but it did not soften the conditions required for the program's inauguration. To obtain a visa waiver for its citizens, Ankara still had to fulfill the 72 criteria outlined in the road map of the 2013 deal. It is these conditions that triggered Erdogan’s fit of political amnesia and about which he forgot during the episode.