Cyprus says he will oppose deal until Ankara honours obligations to the island while Turkish president tells Europe to look to its own record on refugees

A deal between the EU and Turkey to stem the flow of refugees and migrants to Europe is hanging in the balance, over a decades-long dispute about the divided island of Cyprus.

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At a summit in Brussels on Thursday night the EU agreed what it was ready to offer Turkey ahead of a meeting on Friday with Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. But the offer fell far short of Ankara’s demands, as Cyprus vowed to block any deal that would speed up Turkey’s EU accession.

“Negotiations will certainly be anything but easy,” said Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel, after the talks finished at 12.30am.

In combative comments as Davutoğlu went in to talks on Friday morning with Donald Tusk, president of the European council, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said Europe should look at its own record on refugees before telling Turkey what to do.

“At a time when Turkey is hosting three million, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first to look at themselves,” Erdoğan said in a televised speech.

Davutoğlu said Ankara’s offer to curb the refugee flow to Europe was strictly a humanitarian rather than a “bargaining” issue.

The president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, had earlier warned he could not agree to restart Turkey’s EU membership talks until Ankara agreed to open its ports and airports to Cypriot goods, under the terms of an existing agreement. “If Turkey [were to fulfil] its obligations according to the Ankara protocol and the negotiating framework, there [would be] no problem. But without it we could do nothing.”



However, a Turkish official in Brussels with Davutoğlu said: “The EU has to see the big picture ... We think there are many steps to be taken for the opening of those (accession) chapters. And that is still our expectation.”

The outlines of the deal were last week agreed by Merkel and Davutoğlu, who discussed speeding up the easing of visa restrictions for Turks, in exchange for Turkey taking back refugees and migrants from Greece. But the deal caused resentment among other EU leaders, who were left to find out about the plan at a summit the next day.



Turkey’s prime minister has stressed that Europe must start resettling Syrian refugees in Turkey, within days of migrants being sent back across the Aegean from Greece, Merkel said.

Turkey is pressing the EU to restart membership talks that have been frozen for nearly a decade over the Cypriot issue and broader concerns about democracy and freedom of speech. At a meeting with EU leaders last week, Davutoğlu called for talks to start on five policy areas, known as chapters, including the rule of law.

Cyprus has been divided since a Greek coup d’etat was followed by a Turkish invasion in 1974 and repeated efforts to unite the island have failed.



Donald Tusk, president of the European council, who is chairing the meeting, has emphasised that large EU countries cannot ride roughshod over Cyprus in the hope of agreeing a deal with Turkey. One EU source said: “We cannot accept a solution that will damage the peace talks in Cyprus.”

Belgium’s prime minister, Charles Michel, insisted no deal was better than a bad deal. “Turkey is asking a lot and I don’t accept a negotiation that at times represents a form of blackmail.”



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While the issue of Cyprus is the biggest sticking point, some countries had lingering concerns about the legality of sending thousands of refugees back from Greece to Turkey.



Aid agencies have accused the EU of abandoning its obligations to refugees, while the UNHCR has voiced concern that people fleeing war or persecution could be returned to their country of origin if forced to go back to Turkey.



David Miliband, the former British foreign secretary who leads the International Rescue Committee, said: “The proposed EU-Turkey deal won’t work. A comprehensive resettlement programme is a humane, orderly and legal way to manage the refugee crisis.”



Dalia Grybauskaitė, Lithuania’s president, said she understood criticism of the proposals. “The package is very complicated, it will be very difficult to implement and is on the edge of international law.”

Arriving at the summit, David Cameron said he supported the plan to send people back to Turkey. He emphasised that Britain’s “special status” meant the UK would not be granting visa-free travel to Turks or offering more Syrians asylum in the UK beyond the 20,000 the UK has already promised to take over five years.



The International Rescue Committee has called on the EU to resettle 540,000 Syrians over five years. It said resettling 108,000 Syrians a year was a “fair and achievable commitment” that represents a quarter of all Syrians in need of international shelter.



But this number is far greater than the numbers being haggled over in the meeting rooms of Brussels. EU leaders are discussing resettling 72,000 Syrians in Europe but even these figures are recycled from existing schemes that have been slow to start.

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Around 43,000 refugees are currently stuck in Greece, unable to travel north as a result of border closures, including 14,000 at Idomeni, the border village that has become a squalid makeshift camp.

In theory, these refugees can expect to be relocated to other EU countries. But Syrians, Afghans and anyone else following in their footsteps face the prospect of being sent back to Turkey, although EU leaders are yet to decide when the return plan will come into force. If the date were too far in the future, EU leaders fear a “pull effect” as refugees scramble to get to Europe before the deadline; but too soon, and Greece’s over-stretched legal system would be unable to cope.

Greece will need to send hundreds of judges to its islands, who will work around the clock assessing asylum claims. Individual assessments and the right of appeal are seen as crucial if the EU is to make the case that returns are in line with international law.



The UK thinks returns are legal, as long as asylum claims are assessed on their merits. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said: “We think this can be done in line with EU and international law and it is important it is introduced and set up in the right way. We think that means focusing on individual cases and [assessing them] on their merits. But it is one of the concerns raised by a number of countries.”