{"id":24449,"date":"2016-04-08T02:09:23","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T02:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/turkey-warns-it-may-ditch-migrant-deal\/"},"modified":"2016-04-08T02:08:59","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T02:08:59","slug":"turkey-warns-it-may-ditch-migrant-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/turkey-warns-it-may-ditch-migrant-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey warns it may ditch migrant deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Turkish President warned the EU that Ankara may not implement a key deal.}<\/p>\n

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday warned the European Union that Ankara would not implement a key deal on reducing the flow of migrants if Brussels failed to fulfil its side of the bargain.<\/p>\n

Mr Erdogan\u2019s typically combative comments indicated that Ankara would not sit still if the EU fell short on a number of promises in the deal, including visa-free travel to Europe for Turks by this summer.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Vatican confirmed that the pope would next week make a brief, unprecedented trip to the Greek island of Lesbos where thousands of migrants are facing potential deportation to Turkey under the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are precise conditions. If the European Union does not take the necessary steps, then Turkey will not implement the agreement,\u201d Erdogan said in a speech at his presidential palace in Ankara.<\/p>\n

The March 18 accord sets out measures for reducing Europe\u2019s worst migration crisis since World War II, including stepped-up checks by Turkey and the shipping back to Turkish territory of migrants who land on the Greek islands.<\/p>\n

TURKEY BENEFITS<\/p>\n

In return, Turkey is slated to receive benefits including visa-free travel for its citizens to Europe, promised \u201cat the latest\u201d by June 2016.<\/p>\n

Turkey is also to receive a total of six billion euros in financial aid up to the end of 2018 for the 2.7 million Syrian refugees it is hosting.<\/p>\n

Marc Pierini, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe, described the visa-free regime as one of the \u201cbiggest benefits for Turkey\u201d in the migrant deal.<\/p>\n

He told AFP that Turkey still has to fulfil 72 conditions on its side to gain visa-free travel to Europe\u2019s passport-free Schengen zone and that the move would also have to be approved by EU interior ministers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shall see if that is a realistic prospect,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s long-stalled accession process to join the EU is also supposed to be re-energised under the deal. But Pierini said there were many conditions still to be fulfilled here.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe worst reading of the EU-Turkey deal would be to imagine that Turkey is about to get a \u2018discount\u2019 on EU membership conditions just because of the refugees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Migrants<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Turkish President warned the EU that Ankara may not implement a key deal.} Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday warned the European Union that Ankara would not implement a key deal on reducing the flow of migrants if Brussels failed to fulfil its side of the bargain. Mr Erdogan\u2019s typically combative comments indicated that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[228],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-afp"],"bylines":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"contributors":[{"id":228,"name":"AFP","slug":"afp","description":"Agence France-Presse is an international news agency headquartered in Paris. It is the oldest news agency in the world and one of the largest. ","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":71}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24449"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24449"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}