Merkel’s Turkey dilemma grows daily amid refugee deal doubts

Angela Merkel’s Turkey dilemma is growing daily.

Months after the German chancellor pushed an EU refugee swap deal with Ankara – to reduce drownings, undermine human traffickers and, not least, ease her domestic political pressures – Merkel is now torn between Ankara appeasement and action.

Weekend arrests in Turkey of opposition politicians has prompted Austria to call for an end to EU-Turkish accession talks. Ahead of an expected grave progress report on EU accession talks with Turkey today, the bloc’s foreign affairs high representative Federica Mogherini expressed “grave concern” on Tuesday at events in Turkey.

And in Berlin? “We stand by the agreements of the EU-Turkey [refugee swap] deal and assume it will be implemented on all sides,” said Steffen Seibert, government spokesman, on Monday.

At the same time, two kilometres away, German president Joachim Gauck received Turkish opposition journalist Cam Dündar, who was later given a high-profile media award in the German capital.

Dündar, ex-editor of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, was imprisoned for publishing information accusing Ankara of supporting Islamist extremism in Syria. Now living in Berlin, he has attacked as "truly weak" German expressions of "concern" about the situation in Turkey since the failed putsch in July.

Stung, Merkel upgraded her “concern” to “truly alarmed”, but Dündar says words will not help the Turkish opposition nor distract from how her “dirty deal” with Ankara over refugees was a “lie from the beginning”.

Merkel officials stand by the refugee swap deal and say talks on its implementation are progressing. Despite everything, Berlin is determined to “keep communication channels open”.

“That is the way to show where European solidarity lies,” said Seibert, “namely with those who stand for a pluralist and democratic Turkish state.”

But Turkey, already stung at Europe’s hesitant condemnation of the failed July putsch, has warned that its patience over a visa liberalisation deal, due last month, is “reaching an end”. Anticipating the collapse of the entire refugee deal, and a renewed migration wave to Europe, President Tayyip Erdogan warned last week that the “terror plague” would hit Germany “like a boomerang”.

Turkish community

Berlin has summoned the Turkish ambassador and demanded the release of opposition figures, in particular Kurdish politicians locked up at the weekend. But in public, German officials dismiss queries about just how much more they will take from Ankara as a “hypothetical question”.

Given its three million-strong Turkish community, Germany is not just another EU member state when it comes to Turkey. And so far it has refused to back growing calls for EU sanctions on Turkey.

From the start, Merkel’s officials conceded that the refugee swap deal was a risk, increasing Erdogan’s leverage over a German leader dismissive of Turkey’s EU ambitions.

Exacerbating already tense bilateral relations this year: a German satirist’s poem describing Erdogan as a paedophile, and a German parliamentary resolution recognising as genocide the Ottomans’ massacre of Armenians.

Now, with the refugee swap deal on the rocks, German officials are already working on parallel deals with northern African states to take back refugees. Anything to prevent a renewed refugee crisis, which would spell doom for Merkel in next year’s federal election.

Already another refugee crisis looms. Deputy foreign minister Michael Roth urged “all critical spirits in Turkey” to apply for asylum in Germany, where this year’s applications have already doubled year-on-year.

In an open letter, the German-Turkish community has urged Merkel to move from words to deeds before Turkey becomes an “Islamofascist dictatorship”. But Dündar believes Europe’s opportunity has passed.

“Erdogan wants a sultanate without a parliament, opposition or free press,” he said. “Europe has realised this, but too late.”