BRATISLAVA, Slovakia – European Union foreign ministers on Friday looked for a way to speak with one voice on relations with Turkey amid concerns about human rights that could threaten a key deal meant to keep refugees away from European shores.
The relationship with Turkey is only one of several items on the agenda for the two-day, 28-nation meeting. The ministers are also set to discuss joint efforts to combat terrorism.
But arrival comments from participants clearly indicated that how to balance relations so they can pressure Ankara on its human rights record without jeopardizing the refugee pact was the main issue on their minds. And with the EU split on how hard to push Turkey, a solution appeared some distance away.
Turkey is pushing for visa-free travel in the EU for its citizens and is threatening to walk away from the migrant deal if its demands aren’t met. But Brussels says it will only allow that if Ankara rolls back a crackdown targeting wide segments of society in the wake of the mid-July abortive coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The agreement commits Turkey to take back migrants from Syria and elsewhere attempting to enter the EU from Turkey illegally and has strongly reduced the migrant influx into the EU since it was fully implemented in March.
Ankara is also angry over calls by several EU government officials to suspend, or even end, years of talks on Turkey’s entry into the EU, again because of concerns about the state of human rights.
Erdogan’s flirtation with reintroducing the death penalty and a terrorist law that extends to journalists are some of the issues eliciting EU apprehension.
