Maria Wilczek

With populism on the rise, Erdogan can now blackmail the EU

President Erdogan is no stranger to blackmailing the EU. He has previously used migrants as a ‘loaded gun’ with which to threaten European leaders. The message is clear: do what I say, or I’ll open the floodgates. This week, he’s been back to his old tricks – bashing the EU and making it clear that if membership talks failed, Turkey would open its borders and allow its three million refugees to stream into Europe. But what sparked this latest resurgence of fighting talk from Erdogan?

The clue lies in the vote last week in Strasbourg, when 479 MEPs backed a decision to halt the process of Turkey’s EU accession. This seemed like a long-due reaction, given recent events in Turkey, where Erdogan has responded to the botched July coup by locking up some 30,000 people, sacking 10,000 civil servants and tightening his grip on the media. But while there is little doubt that the balance of power in Turkey lies with Erdogan, the Turkish president is always keen to remind potential dissenters that his sphere of influence extends far beyond Turkey’s borders. Erdogan doesn’t care much about what MEPs think of him. But he is keen to show the Turkish electorate – and domestic opposition – how far his power extends. And his biggest weapon – the migrant crisis – remains as potent as before. As I wrote in March, it seemed to be ‘only a matter of time before the blackmail intensifies’ – and we are now seeing those threats come to fruition.  

This has been entirely foreseeable. Since the beginning of the migrant crisis talks, neither side has been open with each other. For France and Germany, the deal was essentially an electorally cheap way of shrugging off responsibility for their home-grown migrant crisis. They had been dangling EU membership in front of Turkey for the last 53 years.

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