The Refugee Card in EU-Turkey Relations: A Necessary but Uncertain Deal

Now in its fifth year, the war in Syria has triggered the largest humanitarian and refugee crisis of our time. For most refugees, Turkey is the main transit country to reach Europe, where they hope for a better life. However, Europe has not yet been able to provide a long-term sustainable response to the current refugee situation. Meanwhile, Turkey has become the largest refugee-hosting country in the world with over 2.7 million refugees. As this paper argues, the EU and Turkey need each other in handling the refugee crisis. A failure to cooperate will put the future of hundreds of thousands of Syrians refugees on hold and have irreversible consequences for EU-Turkey relations.