Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, Dec. 7, 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Turkish newspaper Hurriyet cites  President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from an op-ed penned for The Guardian. The bottom line is that Turkey is calling on the world to create a fair mechanism to share the refugee burden.

Source: Erdoğan calls on states to help with refugee crisis – POLITICS

On the surface of it, this article is reasonable. However, it does not reflect the political and social context. For example, densely populated countries, like the UK, should not be expected to share the same burden as more sparsely populated countries, like the US, Canada and Australia. Another political aspect is Angela Merkel throwing billions of Euros of EU money at the crisis, in an attempt to stem the tide of migration to Europe, especially Germany – Germany has bullied the rest of the EU into submission on refugees but the people are pushing back everywhere, most notably in Germany. Finally, many will be wary of Turkey’s president writing op-eds in liberal Western newspapers because it is uncertain whether foreign leaders would be granted the same freedoms in Turkey.

Thoughts?