The Analysis of Responsibility-Sharing in the 2016 European Union–Turkey Refugee Deal

Abstract

In our global world, international cooperation has vital importance when addressing humanitarian disasters. Today, as the majority of refugees live in the Southern countries proximate to their homelands, neighboring countries are predominantly the ones that carry the bulk of the refugee burden. Under certain circumstances, states engage in international cooperation in managing refugee crises; to this end, this study analyzes the motivations behind the signing of the 2016 European Union (EU)–Turkey refugee deal and its outcomes for both parties. Past research has shown that the 2015 refugee crisis in Europe demonstrated that the initiatives that the EU countries embarked upon to pursue a monolithic policy against this mass flow fell short and, therefore, enhanced Turkey's leverage with Europe, which provided Turkey with the ability to gain concessions in bilateral talks. However, this study claims that the EU member countries were in a more advantageous position compared to Turkey as a consequence of signing the refugee deal, and it is better to characterize the deal between the parties as burden-shifting rather than burden-sharing. In addition, although the inflow of approximately one million refugees to European shores panicked the European states and coerced most of them to return to their own national migration policies, this study shows that no concrete concessions were provided to Turkey to manage this massive flow. The provisions of the Deal were not the extraordinary payoffs that EU member countries offered Turkey to fight against the irregular migration, but the extension of EU's traditional migration policy.

Citation

Kargın, İ.A. (2023), "The Analysis of Responsibility-Sharing in the 2016 European Union–Turkey Refugee Deal", Günar, A. and Saygın, D. (Ed.) The European Union in the Twenty-First Century, Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 245-257. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80382-537-320231018