MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd March, 2020) Following a rare quadrilateral video-conference between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his counterparts from France, Germany and the United Kingdom, during which, among other things, the situation in Syria was discussed, experts told Sputnik the conflict's architecture was unlikely to change anytime soon.
With the continent fully absorbed in fighting the coronavirus pandemic, experts said that Erdogan should not expect the support from west he was counting on.
NO SUPPORT FROM NATO ALLIES AMID PANDEMIC
"I don't think the four-way conference will have any impact on events on the ground in Syria or the plight of the Syrian refugees who Erdogan sent to the Turkish-Greek border earlier this month," Gareth Jenkins, a non-resident senior research fellow with the Joint Center Silk Road Studies Program and Turkey Center at the Institute for Security & Development Policy in Stockholm, told Sputnik.
According to the expert, in recent weeks several pro-government Turkish commentators have been hoping that NATO or individual NATO members would intervene to support Turkey against Russia in Syria's Idlib. This was never going to happen even before the coronavirus crisis and it is certainly not going to happen now, given the extraordinary situation in which European countries now find themselves, he continued.
"But, given the expectations amongst some people in Ankara, the lack of any commitment from Germany, France and the UK to helping Erdogan in Syria is a major blow for Erdogan," Jenkins said.
His opinion was echoed by Huseyin Bagci, president of the Turkish Foreign Policy Institute and a professor of international relations at the middle East Technical University (METU) in Ankara, who said in a conversation with Sputnik that the EU was, in general, "out of the Idlib case and Turkey prefers to deal with Russia bilaterally."
"It seems that the Syrian crisis will not be solved soon, and Germany, England and France are now 'outsiders' of the conflict whereas Turkey and Russia remain as main player. Iran is in terrible condition now, and the Astana process will be carried on mainly by Turkey and Russia. İran will not return back to scene soon," Bagci said.
ERDOGAN'S MIGRATION PLOY BACKFIRES
"Similarly, the EU has been very aggressive in backing Greece in refusing to allow Erdogan to force it to accept thousands more refugees. Erdogan's criticisms of European countries that they only care about the refugees when they may arrive in Europe are justified. But Erdogan's attempts to weaponize the Syrian refugees in Turkey have not only backfired but arguably been counterproductive as they have made it more, not less, difficult for European countries to take more in - not least because European government have no desire of being accused by opposition parties and voters of bowing to what many have called Erdogan's attempts to blackmail the EU," Gareth Jenkins of the Joint Center Silk Road Studies Program said.
METU's Bagci compared Turkey's decision to open borders with a "hand granade" that exploded in Ankara's hand because of the miscalculation of how to manage the migrant flow, on the one hand, and the coronavirus pandemic, on the other. Nevertheless, the expert evaluated the move as "a pragmatic and realistic decision by the Turkish government."
Even with political maneuvers put aside, the migration issue "went its natural death" because of the pandemic, according to Bagci. He said the fact that most borders are now closed because of the coronavirus devalued Turkey's demonstration of abandoning its gatekeeper mission.
"Turkish-Greek relations went very high tension after several incidents and death casualties, and after the EU's intervention the Greek side stopped violating the human rights of migrants. The EU lost on reputation concerning the treatment of migrants by Greek forces," he told Sputnik.
At the same time, he said there was a major difference in how Ankara and Brussels perceived each other's stances. While "the main perception in the EU was that Turkey acted in order to get more money," the case, in fact, was that Turkey actually strove to prevent the migration of potentially up to 2 million Syrian refugees to its own territory.
"The social and political problems in Turkey because of the 4.5 million migrants became the biggest obstacle for Turkey now, and the main idea is, as the government statements indicate clearly, to make the EU as 'part of the problem.' Therefore, this expectation of President Erdogan is not fulfilled due to the corona pandemic," Bagci said.
The expert said he believed that a revision of the 2016 EU-Turkish migration deal was "inevitable," and would be a chance for Turkey, which currently considers itself the "loser" party of the agreement, to make the terms more equal.
"Turkey and the EU will negotiate after the corona crisis is over," he said.
However, whether these talks would feature the issue of Turkey's accession to the bloc was a doubt shared by all of Sputnik's interlocutors.
"Turkey's EU accession process is dead. But neither side wants to be the one that buries it. It is possible that it might be resurrected once Erdogan is no longer in power. But it certainly won't happen before," Gareth Jenkins of the Joint Center Silk Road Studies Program said.
Bagci voiced a similar opinion, saying that even though the number of pan-European summits was most likely going to increase amid the coronavirus pandemic, "Turkey's EU membership will not make any substantial progress in foreseeable future."
His opinion is that EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyyen will strive to work out a new migration deal and provide more financial support to turn Turkey and Syria into adequate nests for migrants.
"The fact, however, remains that the EU will take the issue much more carefully then it was before. Then the migrant issue will no longer be only Turkey's problem but a 'common problem' for both sides. A cooperation between two sides is more than necessary," Bagci said.
While the issue of Turkey's accession into the EU is up in the air, the coronavirus pandemic has created a window of opportunity for the two sides to better their relationship in general, according to Birol Baskan, a non-resident scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
"Turkey and EU are both facing a historic crisis in the form of a virus. This is not the time to quarrel, but cooperate. I am sure that they will improve relations to solve not only the refugee problem, but also the novel coronavirus crisis," he told Sputnik.
"Turkey has been undergoing some serious economic and financial problems. The cost of hosting millions of refugees has added to and might have even exacerbated them. I do not know the details of how much the EU has been sharing Turkey's burden, but it seems not at the level Turkey expected. Hence the still ongoing crisis and the four-party conference," Birol Baskan said.
Citing Erdogan's order to the security forces to prevent more refugees from risking the sea crossing to the Greek islands and bus them back to Istanbul, Gareth Jenkins of the Joint Center Silk Road Studies Program said "his gambit failed and he has been forced to return to honouring the March 2016 deal with the EU."
According to the expert, should Erdogan insist on breaking the 2016 deal, "he risks getting nothing" -- no EU commitment to taking significant numbers of refugees and no money, and potentially not even all of the money that the EU has pledged but not yet disbursed.
"My feeling is that, if Erdogan honors his side of the bargain, the EU will try to provide more money," Jenkins said.
However, with the coronavirus pandemic raging day after day, the expert said it was not at all clear how much money was going to be left available, given that neither COVID-19's duration nor its economic impact could be predicted at the moment.
"All we can say for certain is that there are going to be less EU funds available for the Syrian refugees than there would have been if the coronavirus crisis had not occurred," Jenkins said.
