Turkey threatens to cancel the migration agreement with the EU if the visas are not lifted

World News Rudolph Rodriquez
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Turkey will cancel the agreement with the European Union to control the influx of migrants and refugees if Brussels does not guarantee that by the end of the year the Turkish citizens can travel without visas in the EU countries, said Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, for the newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

The statement made by the Turkish official comes in response to a statement of the Vice-President of the European Parliament Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, who said yesterday that an agreement with Turkey on visa will not be completed even in 2017 because of concerns of Europeans about the purges widely carried out by the Turkish government after the failed coup attempt on 15 July.

The Ankara government committed at the beginning of the year to accept migrants or refugees expelled from the European countries in exchange for 3 billion, funds for development programs and the possibility that Turkish citizens will be able to travel without visas to the EU.

However, the EU postponed the date for a lifting of visas for Turkish citizens because of the strict legislation against terrorism and allegations of human rights abuses by the authorities of Turkey, Cavusoglu saying that the Turkish government is losing patience.

The official defended the counterterrorism legislation and extending the state of emergency in Turkey and Ankara’s policy compared with the situation in France after a series of terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016.

“If some European countries are stepping up legislation to combat terrorism and ask Turkey to relax on his own, people will understand that we do not fight terrorism with the same intensity,” said Cavusoglu, adding that his country fights against the jihadist Islamic State against the Kurdish organizations and against those who staged the coup.