ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The head of Greece’s refugee service said that for three years, Turkey has not fully abided by the terms of its 2016 migrant deal with the European Union. “Since [March 2020], Turkish authorities are not cooperating and they are not accepting people back to their territory,” Marios Kaleas, Greece’s director of asylum services, told Rudaw’s Nma Nabaz on Friday. In 2016, Turkey and the EU signed a multi-billion euro deal aimed at containing a wave of migration into Europe. Under the deal, Ankara agreed to stop people from traveling irregularly to Europe and to accept failed asylum seekers from Europe. In exchange, Turkey received funds and Turkish citizens could travel to Europe visa-free. Kaleas said the deal has achieved its main goal since it reduced the migrant flow, but some parts require better implementation. “There are specific parts of the agreement that seem like it is not working. We have to rethink how we implement it,” he said. Kaleas led a Greek delegation visiting the Kurdistan Region this week. Athens has been accused by human rights organizations of assaulting migrants and pushing them back across the border into Turkey. In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Greece had violated the EU’s human rights convention in its practice of forcing boats of asylum seekers back to Turkey. Greece is considered a gateway to western Europe for migrants passing through Turkey, including many Kurds taking dangerous land or sea journeys with the hopes of making better lives for themselves and their families. Turkey is home to over 3.6 million registered Syrian refugees as well as other nationalities, according to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. There is growing anti-refugee sentiment in the country amidst rising inflation and cost of living and it is an election issue ahead of a run-off between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his challenger Kamal Kilicdaroglu on May 28. Neither achieved the needed majority in the first round of voting on May 14.
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