The Syrian Refugee Crisis: New Negotiation Chapter In European Union-Turkey Relations

Abstract

Syria is one of the countries where a revolution wave named Arab Spring uprose in early 2011. The most radical discourse from Arab Spring into the still ongoing civil wars took place in Syria as early as the second half of 2011. At the beginning it was a civil protest against Assad’s government. Nobody could not estimate the future developments in Syria. The cost of the war in Syria increases every day. More than 250,000 Syrians have lost their lives in four-and-a-half years of armed conflict, which began with anti-government protests before escalating into a full-scale civil war. More than 11 million others have been forced from their homes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and those opposed to his rule battle each other - as well as jihadist militants from Islamic State. Mixed featured developments and longer resistance of Assad’s regime than estimated escalated tension in Syria in last four and half years. As a result, many countries in the Middle East, such as Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, also Turkey, Serbia, Germany, Sweden, Hungary, Austria, Netherlands, Bulgaria are the sides that should pay a cost of the Syrian war. These states spend a remarkable budget for the Syrian refugees. Economic expenditure is just one dimension of Syrian refugee crisis. Movement of Syrian refugees to the European countries passing Turkish borders is one of the biggest migration crisis of the modern world history. Considering multifaced impacts of the migration, the aim of this paper is to analyze the Syrian refugee crisis as a new negotiation headline between the Europan Union and Turkey.