Conference on “Germany, Turkey and the Syrian Refugee Crisis” ESI Founding Chairman Gerald Knaus delivered a presentation on the refugee influx to the EU member states and the importance of Turkey’s “readmission agreement.”
ANKARA - On the 26th of February, 2016, TEPAV together with the European Stability Initiative’ (ESI), held a conference on the Syrian Refugee Crisis. In detail, the conference titled ‘How Germany and Turkey can save the liberal Europe and the EU debate on refugees’ was on the ever-growing number of refugees in Turkey, Balkans and some other EU member states and the political, social and economic ripple effects are continuing to come with it.
The conference was held primarily to analyze the issue at hand and discuss what Turkey and EU can do collectively in order to tackle the problems arising from the current Syrian Refugee Crisis. Additionally, the recent strengthening of illiberal movements across the EU in the face of refugee inflow into EU was addressed as well.
The conference was Moderated by Nilgün Arisan Eralp, Director of TEPAV’s European Union Institute, and was kicked off with the welcome and opening remarks, followed by two presentations and a Q&A session.
Following the remarks, the Keynote Speaker for the conference, Gerald Knaus, Founding Chairman of European Stability Initiative, took to the stage in order to give the first presentation of the conference, titled ‘Germany, Turkey and the Syrian Refugee Crisis’.
Mr. Knaus, in his presentation, explained, briefly, the Samsom Plan, dealing with the issue of readmission of refugees between Greece and Turkey as well as further plans and policies that would allow for Syrian refugees to be accepted into Europe from Turkey, in the near future.
Moreover, in his presentation Mr. Knaus laid down a broad outlines on ‘how to go about the Plan’ in the following four steps:
- Prepare a framework continuous resettlement of refugees from Turkey,
- Suspend relocation from Greece, focus on taking refugees from Turkey instead,
- Launch the required processes to lift EU visa requirement for Turkish citizens, and,
- Prepare Greek-Turkey Readmission process.
Mr. Knaus finished his presentation by giving his thoughts on how to overcome the illiberal political movements that have been in the rise in Europe, especially in the face of the current refugee crisis.
Following Mr. Gerald Knaus’ presentation, Güven Sak, Managing Director of TEPAV, delivered a presentation titled ‘Contextualizing Syrian Refugees in Turkey’ in which he pointed out that ‘there still is not a structured plan for Turkey on how to deal with this issue’. Furthermore, Mr. Sak pointed out that there is a dire need to find new and innovative ways to tackle the refugee situation, and if approached in the right way, the refugee influx may provide remedies for the recent episode of low growth rates and boost the state’s capacity to attain social cohesion in Turkey.
Furthermore, Mr. Sak, in his presentation, investigated the role of globalization and integration policies in relation to the refugees living in Turkey and how these approaches can become positive engagement tools with the European Union and lead to positive outcomes for Turkey as a whole.
Related, Mr. Sak also opened to discussion a plan that he referred to as a “potential game-changer:”: the ‘Made in Turkey by Syrians Programme.’ This plan offers the establishment of highly regulated Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in which companies operating inside would be required to employ Syrians above a certain quota. In order for these SEZs to become successful, Mr. Sak underlined that a unique certificate of origin is required such as ‘Made in Turkey by Syrians’, as well as the securing of bulk orders from multi-national corporations and access to markets in which Turkey’s export performance is lagging behind.
After a brief Q&A session, Mrs. Nilgün Arısan Eralp concluded the conference by thanking all the participants for their interests and the speakers for their detailed presentations.
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How Germany and Turkey can save liberal Europe and the EU debate on refugees - Gerald Knaus
