To keep Syrian refugees away from Europe…

The Syrian refugee problem was seen to be a major item in all of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's contacts in Britain, Davos and Berlin. Wherever he goes, the most basic question he encounters is how to cope with the refugee problem. It is even observed that the most decisive factor in the European Union's recent attraction to Turkey is, once again, the refugee problem. Yet the question being asked is not how Turkey has coped or will cope with the refugee problem, nor how Europe might help Turkey in this regard.

Turkey's experience with the refugees it has admitted to its own territory already earns great admiration at every level. Frankly, since it is assumed that Turkey, which voices little complaint to the world, is coping with this problem adequately with its own means, the matter interests hardly anyone. Turkey, which makes do on its own resources and hosts refugees whose numbers have reached 2.7 million according to the latest counts, has won the admiration of everyone in the world. The problem for Europe arises from the refugees not stopping in Turkey either and beginning to knock on its own doors. That is why, both on Ahmet Davutuoğlu's trip and in the contacts of all Turkish officials, the question put to them is exactly how the refugees' going to Europe can be prevented. For this very reason, this question also gives a clear picture of the exhaustion of European values.

The question put to me in a programme I took part in on BBC World Radio last week was exactly of this kind. "What measures will Turkey take to prevent Syrian refugees from embarking on their adventures of going to Europe?"

There is the pitiful condition of people who were forced to flee tragically from an environment in which 12 million Syrians have been uprooted from their homes, 400 thousand of them have been savagely slaughtered under the terror of the Assad regime, Daesh and the PYD, and life has been made unlivable for those who remain. What these men worry about is how the comfort they have attained can be preserved, and how they can close their doors to the wretched, who ask for help, who ask for a tiny share of their comfort.

The hungry, destitute refugees pressing against their doors evidently disturb their peace. We cannot know, of course, whether it pricks their conscience. At that point they also become confused about whom to be angry at and whom to blame. Their anger at the refugees is not enough; they go on to blame Turkey for not preventing them effectively enough. These accusations at times run parallel to, and along the same logic as, the accusations that Turkey supports terror.

Only Assad and his regime are not blamed for this flow of refugees. Turkey is asked to make greater efforts than it already does to stop the flow of refugees, yet they somehow cannot bring themselves to say that it could be stopped at its real source. The existence and continuation of the Assad regime is the real source of the refugee flow. Unless this source is dried up, no one has any chance of coping with the refugee flow. Let us say more: the refugee flow created by those forced to flee the Syrian regime is in fact like the forerunner of much larger refugee flows that will come from the whole of the Middle East and Africa. If the EU thinks it can stop these waves through measures to be taken by Turkey, it is badly mistaken.

While every corner of the world turns into a scene of conflagration, Europe's attitude was generally to pay no attention at all, so long as the fire was far from itself. Yet it is no longer possible for a fire burning anywhere in the world not to make itself felt in all of Europe's cities.

For that reason, the Syrian problem also gives Europe an opportunity to review and change the policy it has followed until now in the Middle East and in other underdeveloped countries. Europe will no longer be able to keep at a distance the unrest caused by the regimes it has supported through its policies all over the world. It will no longer be able to protect the welfare society it has built for itself with the walls it raises against people coming from countries for whose backwardness it bears serious responsibility. Europe will have to learn to share with them the prosperity that is the right of all humanity, of the world's poor and oppressed.

During the week, together with the former President of Tunisia Moncef Marzouki, the Egyptian liberal politician Ayman Nour, the Yemeni Nobel laureate Tawakkol Karman, the Syria Forum, the former prime minister of the Interim Government Ghassan Hitto and the current prime minister Ahmad Toumeh, and a 20-person delegation accompanying them, we visited the Harran and Akçakale refugee camps in Şanlıurfa. The policy Turkey has put forward regarding Syrian refugees is a source of great pride for itself, but at the same time a policy that saves the honour of all humanity.

The most important thing the Syrians in the camp said repeatedly was that "while the whole world stands by as spectators to the drama of the Syrians, Turkey hosts 2.7 million Syrians without making them feel any sense of obligation and without any complaint." They also cried out to the journalists following the visit: "Moreover, in an extremely graceful manner, it refrains even from calling us refugees, it calls us guests."

2.7 million refugees are in Turkey alone. Together with the refugees in other countries, this figure has reached 6 million outside, and 12 million including those displaced inside the country.

A refugee is without doubt the most important indicator of the legitimacy of a regime. To approach the Syrian problem through the question of whether the Assad regime, which by this indicator has no legitimacy left, still has an alternative is, in a single word, to become a partner in this massacre, in this crime against humanity.