The Sun of Saul Dawns

On Sunday February 28th (28/2/16) the Obama administration demanded that the Hungarian movie "Son of Saul" was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Feature.

This was unfortunate because that movie struck me as an extremely cynical attempt by Hungary to use the issue of the Nazi Holocaust to embarrass Germany. At the same time Hungary along with Poland is trying very hard to deny it's own Nazi past and its increasingly Nazi present. 

Within European Union (EU) politics this tension is currently causing a lot of trouble in two key areas; The sanctions against Russia in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the refugee crisis that support for ISIL has created.

So right on cue on Monday February 29th (29/2/16) the EU refugee crisis once again exploded. This saw violence both in Calais, France on the border with the UK and in Greece on the border with Macedonia - a non-EU state.

Although this was news the situation is Calais is far from new. What really annoys me about the current refugee crisis is that it is nothing that the EU - particularly the original, core states - haven't had to deal with before. 

For example I actually went to school with a lot of Polish Catholics. Unlike today in the 1980's that had absolutely nothing to do with the EU's free movement of people policy. Instead it's because their families had been taken in by the UK as refugees from first the Nazi and then the Soviet occupation.

The next big wave of refugees came with the end of the Cold War and the numerous Balkan wars of the 1990's that created many of the newer EU member states. There was also something of a third wave in the late 1990's following the NATO invasion of Serbia and the occupation of its southern Kosovo province.

Due to a variety of reasons - particularly the global dominance of the English language - a lot of these refugees wanted to come to the UK. However while Britain seems to really enjoy smashing up countries it really doesn't like having to deal with the consequences. As a result it refused to take in many of these refugees leaving them stuck in Calais.

The French government did use to house them in a dedicated refugee centre in Sangatte which became known as the Sangatte Refugee Centre. However the UK was very opposed to even this arguing that providing humane conditions for refugees in Calais somehow encouraged more refugees to try and enter the UK. As a result after more than a decade of heated political argument the British government finally forced the French government to close the Sangatte centre in 2007.

Funnily enough this didn't solve the problem and large numbers of prospective refugees continue to congregate in Calais. However rather than being housed in a properly managed centre they are forced to live in a series of illegal squatter camps collectively known as "The Jungle." 

As you would expect conditions in these camps are pretty squalid with no proper housing, no proper sanitation and no rule of law subjecting the people forced to live in them to disease and violence. With the new waves of refugees caused by ISIL conditions in the Calais camps have begun to deteriorate dramatically.

So in the last couple of months the French authorities have set about building more formalised refugee camps in Calais with sanitation and comparatively sturdy buildings made out of shipping containers. They then ordered the demolition of the squatter camps to force people into the formal camps.

The problem is that the UK has viewed this building of formal camps in Calais as an precursor to re-opening the Sangatte refugee camp. As a result the Jungle camps suddenly became a cause celbre for Britain's 'caring liberals.' The band Coldplay even referenced it at the recent BRIT Awards. 

The UK's objective of this sort of multi-channel onslaught was of course to smear the French plan in order to keep the squalid squatter camps open and prevent the more formal camps being opened.

Key pawns in this effort have been the British protest group "No Borders." They like to refer to themselves as Anarchists although I suspect Anarchists tend to use a different term to refer to them. 

Salivating at the prospect of a big violent confrontation with the police No Borders have been going around the Jungle telling the the prospective refugees all sorts of lies to get them to refuse to move to the more formal camps and resist the eviction. Probably the most grievous of those lies is that the formal camps are in fact deportation camps when No Borders know full well that actual deportation camps are a lot more secure than that.

Despite decades of evidence that this beggar-thy-neighbour approach to refugees simply does not work it is still the approach that everyone in the EU is insisting on taking. This is what has forced Macedonia to close its border with Greece triggering the violent scenes seen there.

In part everyone has been forced into this by German Chancellor/Head of Government Angela Merkel's ridiculous and emotionally driven decision to invite all of the World's refugees and economic migrants to come to journey before the EU had drawn up a plan of how to deal with them.

However the much more serious problem has been Hungary's utter commitment to the beggar-thy-neighbour approach that has seen it time and time again block an EU-wide response to the crisis. 

Not only did they attempt to block that plan being agreed back in September 2015 when it was passed by a two-thirds majority they filed a legal challenge to prevent the plan being put into action. Hungary is now staging a referendum to reject the plan in the hope that it can be used to block the plan further when the Court eventually but inevitably rules against them.

With Hungary almost single handedly preventing the EU from responding to the refugee crisis this has left the other EU member states along with the neighbouring states with no option other than to follow Hungary's example and build border fences to keep the refugees out.

Unfortunately this is not an option for Greece because their main border is not a land border that can be sealed with razor wire but sea border. Specifically the 11th largest sea border in the World made up 14,000km (8,500 miles) spread across thousands of islands. Therefore if Greece wants to behave like everyone else in the EU and seal its border to refugee it will have to persuade Turkey to stop the refugees taking to the sea in the first place.

The problem with this is that Turkey is deliberately and intentionally flooding the EU with refugees for political gain. I believe the term NATO Commander for Europe General Phillip Breedlove used was "Weaponised" even if for a NATO commander Breedlove does seem to have an extremely poor understanding of both geography and time keeping.

In the first instance Turkey's weaponisation of refugees is to sow division and discord amongst the EU member states. With EU governments at each other's throats it becomes much more difficult for the EU to put unified pressure on Turkey to end its support for ISIL, the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) and associated groups. This is despite Turkey's support for such terrorist groups posing a clear and present threat to the safety and security of the EU and its citizens.

In the second instance Turkey's weaponisation of predominately Muslim refugees is to radicalise the Islamist base of the Justice & Development Party (AKP). By showing Muslim refugees being beaten by police in squalid border camps the AKP and their leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hoping to send the message that the EU hates Muslims. This of course makes it even more difficult for the EU to put pressure on Turkey to end its support for terrorism. It also makes it much more difficult Turks who share EU values such as rights for women and press freedom to complain when Erdogan tries to take those rights away. 

It should hardly come as a surprise to anyone that the flow of refugees from Turkey massively increased in the summer of 2015. 

This of course was the same time that Turkey was coming under increased pressure to close its border to ISIL to deny them fighters and equipment. It was also the time where the AKP failed to win a majority in the General Election forcing Erdogan to launch attacks against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in order to prop up support for his plans for an Executive Presidency.

In the third instance Turkey's weaponisation of refugees is simply to extort concessions from the EU.

Therefore the notion that the EU should negotiate with Turkey over the refugee issue reminds me of that old adage that you should never wrestle with a pig. You'll both get dirty but only the pig will enjoy it.

Unfortunately due to Hungary's intransigence and frankly political naivety that is exactly what the EU has been forced to do. On Monday (7/3/16) the EU meet with Turkey to provisional agree a 6 point plan to tackle the refugee crisis.

It is testament to how bad that deal is that you will struggle to find an EU based news report that is prepared to tell you what those 6 points are. However the one point that everyone is prepared to champion is a mechanism that will see Turkey take back an irregular migrant for every refugee that the EU accepts from camps in Turkey. This is simply not going to happen.

Turkey has already made clear that it will not accept a single irregular migrant until all existing irregular migrants have been evacuated from Greece. That process cannot begin until Hungary drops its legal challenge and the EU migrant quota system goes into action. 

Even then it will take a substantial amount of time to clear that backlog because there are currently around 1 million irregular migrants in Greece. Adjusted for population that is around five times as many refugees as there are currently in Turkey. You can guarantee that while the EU is working to clear the backlog Turkey will continue sending more irregular migrants at at least the current rate of 2,300 per day.

If by some miracle the backlog is cleared and Turkey does officially start accepting returning irregular migrants you can be assured the first irregular migrants to be sent back will be fully supported by Turkish *ahem* human rights groups to launch a legal challenge that could take years to resolve.

In return for Turkey not, in any way, stemming the flow of irregular migrants or accepting back a single one the EU has decided to pay an extremely heavy price to leave the situation exactly the same at it is.

The first part of this price is clear. It is E3bn (USD3bn/GBP2bn) to be paid directly to Turkey. As the deal progresses the EU will pay a further E3bn to Turkey giving a total of E6bn of blood money to Turkey.

The second price the EU will pay is slightly more complicated. It will re-open EU membership negotiations with Turkey. The problem is that between the support for terrorism, the crushing on internal dissent and press freedoms and the continued Turkish military occupation of EU memberstate Cyprus there is not a single thing that qualifies Turkey to be a member of the EU. As such in order for those negotiations continue the EU will have to permanently scrap the core values on which it was founded.

The third price however is almost as clear as the first. Even without Turkey becoming an EU member state the EU will grant free access to Turkey's population of 80 million to the EU's Schengen passport free zone from June 2016. This means that the entire population of Turkey including all the refugees/irregular migrants will be free to enter every EU state without a security check or even a passport check.  

I suppose though technically that last concession will end all irregular/illegal migration from Turkey into the EU. By making all migration in effect legal.  

So rather than engaging in anymore discussions with Turkey over the refugee crisis the EU first needs to get its own house in order. This involves Hungary dropping its legal challenge and the quota system going into force. What will really help that along is Chancellor Merkel finally conceding that she made a mistake rather than carrying on in the vain hope that her peers and her voters will somehow be fooled into thinking otherwise.

Once the EU has its own plan up and running it can then go back to Turkey. Not to beg that the flow of irregular migrants stops but to demand it. Oneway to go about that is to levy a E200,000 charge to pay for the upkeep of every irregular migrant Turkey tries to impose on the EU. That will be paid out of tax levied on every Turkish import to the EU including the tourism sector.  

As soon as Turkey realises it will be paying a price for its misbehaviour rather than receiving a reward its weaponisation of migrants will stop in the blink on an eye. 

16:55 on 11/3/16 (UK date).