Turkey serving as EU’s “lockmaster” to keep down number of refugees

Increased EU support for UN agencies in regions hosting Syrian refugees is the right if belated step, argued Thorsten Benner on the German radio station NDRInfo on September 24. But it remains unclear whether this will impact the number of refugees who want to move on to Europe, Benner said. Therefore, paying Turkey’s security forces to act as the EU’s ​“lockmaster” holding back Syrian refugees seems to be the EU’s preferred short-term strategy to decrease the number of migrants.