The problem of illegal immigration in European Union-Turkey relations

ABSTRACT Illegal immigration, which is not actually a recently-formed concept, has been on the top lines of the international agenda during especially the last decade of the 20th century. Developed countries, principally United States and the Western European Countries as well as the developing countries have been suffering fom this concept of illegal immigration to a large extent. Economic reasons constitute the main reason of the illegal immigration most of the time. Only a few of the immigrants can be granted the residency rights of the countries that they immigrate to. Actually, in most cases they are either sent back to their own countries or sent to a third country. Turkey, located in the center of Europe, Asia and Africa triangle, is on the busiest illegal immigration route. In the process of illegal immigration to European countries, Turkey, acting as a "resource" and "transit" has transformed into a "target country" recently. As a result of concerns arising from its geographical location, Turkey signed 1951 Geneva Convention with a geographical reservation. This reservation continued to exist as per the 1967 Protocol that is about the legal position of the refugees. As a part of the efforts to fight against illegal immigration, European Union requested Turkey to reconcile its legislation with that of the EU and withdraw its geographical reservation on 1951 Geneva Convention. The aim of this study is to explain EU's requests from Turkey and Turkey's approach to these requests that arise in the process of fight against illegal immigration. In the first part of this study, definition of the illegal immigration, reasons, results and the risks associated with this concept are presented. In the second part, EU's approach in the process of fight against Illegal Immigration is examined. Finally, in the last part, EU's requests from Turkey and Turkey's approach to these requests as well its concerns are explained. VI