The European Migrant Crisis: Ending Turkey's Blackmail Is A Must

Press conference: Northern Syria - the Turkish invasion, Europe's security and an alternative to the Turkey deal pic.twitter.com/3TM0rdVDyc

— rimatüzün (@rimatuezuen) August 31, 2016

An excerpt from, "Merkel admits mistakes made in Germany, EU with refugee crisis" by Erik Kirschbaum and Andrea Shalal, Reuters, August 30, 2016:

Germany and other European Union countries turned a blind eye to the refugee crisis building on its external borders for too long, Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a German newspaper interview to be published on Wednesday.

Merkel, who has faced criticism in Germany for launching her policies of welcoming refugees a year ago, also told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that Germany and the EU will need patience and endurance in dealing with migration of people to Europe.

"There are political issues that one can see coming but don't really register with people at that certain moment - and in Germany we ignored both the problem for too long and blocked out the need to find a pan-European solution," she said.

Merkel made the comments in an unusually self-critical analysis that appeared to be timed to the one-year anniversary on Wednesday of her now-famous statement "wir schaffen das", or "we can do this", when asked about the rising tide of refugees.

An excerpt from, "The EU Sells Its Soul to Strike a Deal with Turkey" by Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, March 20, 2016:

"The deal with Turkey is as sordid as anything I have ever seen in modern European politics. On the day that EU leaders signed the deal, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, gave the game away: 'Democracy, freedom and the rule of law.... For us, these words have absolutely no value any longer.' At that point the European Council should have ended the conversation with Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish prime minister, and sent him home. But instead, they made a deal with him — money and a lot more in return for help with the refugee crisis."

An excerpt from, "Turkey Blackmails Europe on Visa-Free Travel" by Soeren Kern, Gatestone Institute, April 24, 2016:

Turkey has threatened to renege on a landmark deal to curb illegal migration to the European Union if the bloc fails to grant visa-free travel to Europe for Turkey's 78 million citizens by the end of June.

If Ankara follows through on its threat, it would reopen the floodgates and allow potentially millions of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to flow from Turkey into the European Union.