Securitisation and externalisation of European Union migration policy: Repercussions on Turkey

EU common migration policy has been developed in a securitised way in the internal and foreign policy. The domain of EU migration policy has been enlarging towards the candidate countries including Turkey, the neighbouring countries and other third countries in the framework of externalisation strategy. Despite the discourse of European Commission and the majority of European Parliament on the development of a comprehensive migration policy taking migrant?s rights into consideration, the policy and implementation on this issue still focus on security aspects. This policy while not ensuring the prevention of irregular migration, brings about financial and humanitarian burden and leads to the strengthening of human smuggling and criminal networks.EU has been externalising its common migration policy through the model of concentric circles. However, the conditionality policy applied in this process cannot function efficiently since the third countries perceive the provided incentives as insufficient and the policy as EU-centric. Since migration is a multi-dimensional phenomenon directly influencing countries of origin, transit and destination and the migrants, ?quadri-win? strategy which takes into consideration the needs of all parties should be applied in order to ensure the efficiency of the policy. Nothing but this kind of a strategy can change the perception of immigration as a problem and threat and make irregular migration manageable.Turkey, as the main transit country for migration movements heading towards the EU, has been turning out to be a key country affected from the dynamics of securitisation-externalisation. In the process of EU membership and the transformation into a country of immigration, Turkey should revise its migration policy and align with the emerging conditions and EU policies. While Turkey is likely to face various opportunities and costs within this period, a ?win-win? situation could be achieved along with the reconciling attitude of EU and Turkey. In this context, the handling of irregular migration in a comprehensive approach rather than as a problem to be controlled would benefit all parties to the issue.