Early yesterday morning, heavily protected Greek riot police swooped down to clear Europe’s largest informal refugee camp, where thousands of refugees have been stranded for months just south of the Greek-Macedonian border. The camp at Idomeni was home to approximately 8,000 desperate and desolate mostly Syrians who were stranded as they tried to make their way to points further northwest in the European Union (EU).
And over the winter months, these 8,000 had managed to eke out a survival — hardly a living — waiting for some event that would open the border to their dreams of a better life. It was partially closed in November, fully closed to them in March, once the EU and Turkey reached an initial deal to stem the human tide in what is the greatest refugee crisis since the end of the Second world War. After the dawn raid, these refugees will likely be returned to Turkey for formal processing and to await individual EU nations to take their already overmanned quotas. It is, effectively, the end of the road for those who left everything behind.
With European voters turning sharply to the Right, with growing anti-Muslim sentiment across Europe, and with the EU both unable and unwilling to take more refugees in, the only hope now is that deal between Brussels and Ankara. That is predicated upon 6 billion euros (Dh24.65 billion) being paid by the EU to Turkey to pay for the cost of housing refugees and on turkey gaining faster and easier access to the 28-member economic and political bloc. But elements of the accord are now beginning to unravel.
Earlier this week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that it was going to be virtually impossible for Ankara to meet the EU conditions on allowing Turks to gain visa-free access to Europe. The deadline for that is July 1, but Merkel says that’s not likely to happen.
In Britain, where voters are being asked to decide in a June 23 referendum whether the United Kingdom should stay or leave the EU, Turkey’s possible entry into the bloc has become a political hot potato. One of the conditions for the refugee accord was for the EU to fast-track Ankara’s long-stalled application to join the bloc. The thought of a mostly Muslim nation joining the mostly Christian European club is too much for some Britons to bear and is being used by the ‘leave’ campaign as one reason now to get out. Either way, the message is clear: Muslims are not welcome in Europe, either as refugees or as EU members.
