Europe’s attitude to refugee crisis is changing

The heartbreaking images of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi lyaing dead on a beach after the rubber dinghy carrying him and his Syrian family to safety in Greece capsized off the coast of Turkey have finally transformed public attitudes to the terrible human cost of Europe’s failure to deal with a surging refugee crisis.

The New York Times noted this when it wrote that “Reaction to the photos has been swift: Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President François Hollande of France issued a joint statement on Thursday calling for “a permanent and obligatory mechanism” to allocate refugees among the 28 member states of the European Union.”

And the New York Times went on to recommend swift action: “On Friday, the United Nations called on the European Union to take in 200,000 people under a binding emergency relocation program, and to set up large reception camps in Italy, Greece and Hungary. The European Commission must act swiftly to ensure that ministers meeting in Brussels on Sept. 14 to deal with the crisis respond to these demands — before the emotions triggered by the photos fade and more people die”.

Britain has suffered from a particularly fierce domestic reaction to the immigrant crisis and the pro-Conservative Daily Telegraph backed the government’s line that the answer lies elsewhere as it argued that the best way to assist Syria’s population is to help them stabilse their country.

It continued: “Next only to America, Britain spends more than any other country on aid to Syrians – and this figure is set to rise yet again. Nevertheless, David Cameron was wise to judge that the time has come to increase the number of refugees invited to Britain. He was also correct to say that they should be taken directly from the camps, which cuts out the deadly risks of travelling to, and then across, Europe. By taking this action, Britain has reaffirmed its determination to help.”

The Guardian took a different view, commenting that: “The turnaround in the British tabloid press has been astonishing. The Murdoch Sun, which just months ago published a column describing the refugees as “cockroaches” by a woman boasting that her heart could not be touched by drowning children, now puts “For Aylan” on its front page and demands that the government provide places for 3,000 orphans. That is very little compared with the need, but it is still 3,000 times more than the paper would have considered Britain had room for three days ago.

Almost everyone now sees that there is a moral imperative to help the Syrian refugees, even if this means letting them into the UK. It may be that this is just a spasm of sentimentality and that in a fortnight the same papers will be back to denouncing the “migrant” hordes in Calais, and demanding that dogs, or the British army, be deployed to protect holidaymakers from refugees as they were three weeks ago”.

Turkey has a special place in the refugee crisis as the country is one of major launch pads for refugees to get into the European Union. The newspaper Today’s Zaman tried to look at the root causes of the crisis: “There are a number of culprits, particularly the Bashar Al Assad regime, in the current stalemate in the Syrian crisis that has turned into a European refugee issue. The UN Security Council which remained silent in the face of the deaths of more than 300,000 people and failed to take decisive action so the council is also one of the chief culprits. If consider the refugee crisis, we can see that consecutive errors and mistakes contributed to the exacerbation of the problem over the last four years.

The paper went on to seek an international conference to find a solution: “Instead of blaming each other, the countries facing the refugee influx should try to better understand the situation and look for lasting solutions. Sadly, no one has an effective solution. Secondly, a search for a solution should be conducted. To this end, the practices since the start of the Syrian crisis in April 2011 should be reviewed honestly and carefully. Thirdly, given that the refugee crisis is of an international character, strong international cooperation is needed. Finally, the reactions and solutions should be based on concrete data rather than emotional reflexes”.