Research Newsletter, #7 (Feb. 2016)

Will Euro 3 Billion Save EU?

EU agreed to give Euro 3 billion to Turkey to stop the Refugees in Turkey. In addition to this, EU will be able to send back some of the refugees according to the deal with Turkey. We can analyze this agreement from different perspectives, in order to understand if the agreement is useful or will serve a purpose or not:

From Turkey’s Perspective:

There are currently almost 3 million refugees living in Turkey. This is equal to the population of Macedonia! Government of Turkey has spent billions of Euro so far to provide shelter and food for the refugees. Therefore, it is very fair that some of the burden is met by the EU.

However, this amount will not be enough to provide better shelter conditions for the refugees in Turkey. Out of the 3 million refugees, only 10% of them stays in the refugee camps. The rest are scattered in the different cities. They somehow try to earn money and survive. Vast majority of the Syrian children are not attending any school due to the lack of infrastructure in Turkey. Such as more schools and Arabic speaking teachers are needed.

The amount (Euro 3 billion) paid by EU will not even cover the half of the annual expenses of almost 300,000 refugees living in camps in Turkey. Nothing will reach to non-camp located to refugees (over 2.5 million) in Turkey.

Therefore, from Turkey’s perspective, getting euro 3 billion from EU is better than nothing but this amount is not enough at all.

From Refugee’s Perspective:

According to the pools, almost 80% of the Syrian and Iraqi refugees want to go back their country/homes. They cannot not make their life, their children cannot go to school and they cannot not be sure about the future. Therefore, they need permanent solutions but not temporary shelters.

From refugee’s perspective, any amount of giving money from EU to Turkish Government does not make much different and does not mean anything.

From EU’s perspective:

EU is totally scared about having millions of refugees in the Europe. Indeed, they are right to be worried. Turkey and Turkish population may handle 3 million refugees alone but all EU countries together cannot deal with 1.5 million refugees. Such as Austria Government does not know what to do with 100,000 refugees. They are planning to deport at least 50% of them back to Turkey before summer 2016.

There are currently between 500—4000 refugees reaching Greek Islands per day. This situation cannot not be sustainable and soon or later, there will be big social problems in EU.

Therefore, EU decision makers found such a temporary solution to stop the refugees in Turkey by paying Euro 3 billion. By this way, they count Turkish authorities to tighten the law enforcement and other means so that refugees cannot not so easily travel to Greece. However, given the length of the Turkish sea borders with Greek Islands and land borders with Bulgaria, and the level of corruption at both sides, human smugglers will find a way to continue their very profitable business. These organized crime groups gets between Euro 1000—2500 per person to take the refugees to Greek Islands or Bulgaria.

Therefore, from practical point of you, paying such amount (Euro 3 billion) to Turkey will not help to decrease the number of refugees reaching EU.

Conclusion

Overall, EU needs to find a more sustainable, effective and efficient solution to protect EU from refugee invasion. The only way to achieve is to make the Syria again a livable country. In order to reach, there is one way that is to have an agreement with Esad Regime. There is no other way at all. If Esad losses and so-called moderate terrorists win, then more refugees will come to EU and the ones in Turkey and EU will not go back Syria at all. So, EU has to sit on table with Syria Regime and starts a development plan. If the Syrians living abroad see that their country is again safe, most of them will go back their homelands. If Esad regime re-take Aleppo fully and provide a strong control in the areas where they control, some Syrians may start turning back soon. However, there is an important action needs to be taken by supporters of Esad Regime (especially Russia), which is to initiate a long-term development plan to make the Syrian cities back to normal urgently. Military success can only be meaningful if social development is provided.

EU decision makers should not forget that as long as chaos and war continues in Syria, paying billons of Euros to Turkey would not solve any problem of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

Where Turkey is heading (I)?

Turkish foreign policy was based on good relations with its neighbors for many years. Actually, the vision of natural leader of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk managed to kept Turkey out of Second World War. Turkey had very good relations with almost all neighbors until 2011. Since that date, relations of Turkey with Iraq, Iran and Syria damaged badly. In addition to this, Turkey stopped the relations with Egypt and Russia fully. Recently, Turkey-USA relations also damaged due to the Northern Syria (PYD and PYG) related policy differences.

The only friend of Turkey is the region is left Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, even with them the relation is just based on the benefits of the Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Such as, Saudi Arabia allowed to use Incirlik airbase in Southern Turkey. Rich Families of Qatar bought productive and profitable Government organizations as well. It is very clear that Turkey’s relation with these two countries cannot not be based on trust. Saudi Arabia and Qatar does not want democracy in Turkey because this model is not good for their own public. They want Turkey change their regime and get close to the one in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Soon or later such artificial relation between Turkey and these two countries will die.

Almost a decade ago, Turkey was shown as an example Islam Country that has democracy and Islam together. Until Arab spring started, Turkey had excellent relations with all Arab countries. However, without any understandable reason, Arab spring damaged the Turkey-Arab world relations. Normally, it should not have been so. Saudi Arabia and Qatar were against the Arab spring as they have no democracy in their countries. However, the level of democracy in Syria, Libya and Egypt were much better than Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Both of these countries do not believe democracy at all. In addition to this, both Saudi Arabia and Qatar Governments dislike and do not respect Turkish Natural Leader Atatürk at all. Therefore, it is not really easy to understand why Turkey has so close relations with these countries.

Turkey does not want a Kurdish autonomous region in Northern Syria at all. But, if so, this can only be avoided if Esad Regime again controls entire country. Otherwise, if the country is in hands of Salafi—Jihadist groups then it will not be possible to keep the unity of Syria. The only way keeping the unity of Syria is that Turkey should urgently change its position and stop supporting all of the opposition groups in Syria.

Turkey and Russia relations damaged because a Russian jet violated the Turkey border only for 17 seconds. Turkey and Greece, both violates the borders more than thousand times a year. There is no logic behind to be enemy with Russia which is permanent member of UN Security Council, most important trade partner of Turkey and over 50,000 Turkish-Russian families based in Turkey. In coming years, less than 10 years time, half Russian and half Turkish young persons will take important roles at Government and private sector. From every point, Russia is very important partner for Turkey. Therefore, decision makers in Turkey should immediately revise their policies and correct the relations with Russia.

Turkey is part of Europe and should continue on this direction. Therefore, being good friend of Saudi Arabia and Qatar will not give anything to Turkey. Being friend of countries which has no respect to human rights and gender equality is not a good reference for Turkey. By the way, these two countries haven't  accept any single Syrian or Iraqi refuge and have not provided any financial support for them as well.

Overall, a sudden and negative change has been observed in foreign policy of Turkey since 2010. Turkish foreign policy was established on “peace in the country and peace in the world” since 1923.

Fighting and being involved wars are not style of Turkey. Being best friend of countries ruled by Sharia is totally against the values of Republic of Turkey. Having a dream of reaching the power of Ottoman Empire is just a nice nostalgia.

Turkey should get back to its original values and its traditional foreign policy designed in 1923. Turkey should continue to follow Ataturk’s way.

ISIS in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia

The Government of Pakistan continues to repeat that there are no footprints of ISIS in Pakistan. However, there are reports in media about involvement of groups supported by ISIS in terrorist activities in large cities like Peshawar, Karachi and Quetta of Pakistan. These groups accept responsibility for terrorist attacks through media announcements after the occurrence of incidents in main cities. In addition to this, it is really not very realistic to claim that there is no ISIS presence in Pakistan, given that these terrorist groups are already in Afghanistan. Furthermore, ISIS and AQ are in good relations.

There are certain religious groups, which show support to ISIS and propagate it among their supporters particularly among students of religious institutions. These groups have and some are trying to get connections with ISIS and become its allies in order to get broader scope and higher position among their counterpart organizations and groups.

These developments are also visible from low scale wall chalking in different cities of Pakistan. However, the slogans reflect that the supporters are in limited number and their activities are quite concealed. The general public considers ISIS a major threat for religious harmony and political stability of the democratic system in the country. Therefore, currently, the level of support in public for ISIS is limited. But, the situation needed to monitored as ISIS is already very active in Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, currently entire attention of international community is focused on Syria and Iraq. But, ISIS is making its branches in Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIS has number of training camps especially in Northern Afghanistan. Day by day, ISIS is increasing its presence at Northern Afghanistan. Their target are clear and obvious:

• Infiltrating to Central Asia and creating chaos there
• Forcing Shia, Hazara and other non-Sunni Muslim groups (who are mainly based at Northern Afghanistan) force to move out from Afghanistan

At this point, Russia should urgently intervene the situation otherwise, the fire will come to Central Asia soon. But provision of military equipment or forces will not be enough to protect Central Asia from ISIS created waves. If Russia wants to protect its back garden, then should be guardian of the human right violations in the region. Currently, there is a lot of pressure on Muslim community in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. This pressure will cause negative impacts and local people will have sympathy on ISIS. The Government management in Turkmenistan is far from respect to human rights and equality.

Unfortunately, decision makers in Pakistan and Central Asian countries believe that rejecting or ignoring the threat of ISIS in the region will solve the problems. For many years, these countries rejected and ignored the drug use problem in their countries. But it is now the case that there is an epidemic drug use problem in those countries.