The year-old deal between the EU and Turkey that helped control an unprecedented migration crisis is at risk of collapse amid a diplomatic feud between Ankara and European governments.

Turkish officials also complain that the agreement has not delivered promised financial aid fast enough and has failed to significantly reduce the number of Syrian refugees — nearly 3 million — living in Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who was at the center of the diplomatic fight last weekend when his plane was barred from landing in the Netherlands, became the latest high-ranking government official this week to threaten to scuttle the agreement. “We are evaluating the refugee deal,” Çavuşoğlu said.

But the bitterness of recent days — including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s repeated comparison of EU governments to Nazis and European Council President Donald Tusk saying such comments were “detached from reality” — is just the latest patch of trouble for the controversial arrangement. Critics have long said the deal amounts to inhumane and potentially illegal treatment of refugees, and an effort by European governments to buy their way out of the political peril that the migrant crisis had created for many leaders, notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Criticism of the deal

The migrant deal has faced withering criticism from human rights groups and members of the European Parliament who say that it has not led to any improvement in conditions for most refugees, especially the tens of thousands of people trapped in camps on outlying Greek islands, who are living in increasingly squalid and dire conditions.

According to the latest statistics from the European Commission, just 3,919 asylum-seeking refugees have been resettled to European countries under the deal with Turkey. The agreement established a one-to-one protocol of return, with the EU accepting one asylum seeker for every irregular migrant returned to Turkey from Greece. It also calls for activating a “voluntary humanitarian admission scheme” once irregular crossings between Turkey and the EU have been “sustainably” reduced.

In a sign of reluctance to participate in the arrangement with Turkey, only 13 EU countries have accepted refugees under the program, with the largest number — 1,406 out of 3,919 — going to Germany, according to EU statistics. Meanwhile, just 916 people have been returned to Turkey from Greece under the arrangement. Some initial projections suggested that 150,000 or more people could be resettled under the program.

A coalition of MEPs renewed their call for ending the agreement with Turkey during a news conference Wednesday on the sidelines of the Parliament’s plenary session in Strasbourg.

“The responsibility that we think we have as the European Union, a humanitarian responsibility, is being shifted to a third country,” said Ska Keller, a German MEP and co-leader of the Greens group. “Turkey is supposed to do our refugee policy.”

Keller said that because the EU was beholden to Turkey over the migrant arrangement,

had insulated himself from criticism, particularly regarding the crackdown on military officials, government workers and journalists that followed the attempted coup last summer.

“Erdoğan has been using that deal … to lower the threshold of the amount of criticism that he receives from the EU member states for all the human rights violations,” she said.

A failure disguised as a success

In a report published this week, the aid agency Doctors Without Borders accused the EU of peddling alternative facts, accusing the EU of falsely claiming that the arrangement with Turkey is a success, a view the agency strongly disputes. “What EU officials fail to mention is the devastating human consequences of this strategy on the lives and health of the thousands of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants trapped on the Greek islands and in the Balkans,” the report said.

The group called on EU leaders “to radically change their approach to migration and ensure a swift end to the unnecessary suffering of the thousands caught in the consequences of the EU-Turkey deal.”

In Brussels, EU officials have said repeatedly that they believe the agreement will remain intact and that they still expect Turkey to live up to its side of the bargain. To be sure, some officials are hoping that the rhetoric emanating from Ankara will cool substantially after a scheduled April 16 referendum on constitutional changes sought by Erdoğan.

Efforts by Turkish officials to campaign for those changes in Europe have been at the heart of the recent diplomatic fight, with the Netherlands barring Çavuşoğlu’s plane to land ahead of a rally in Rotterdam. Another Turkish minister who had driven to Rotterdam was ejected from the country.

“The EU continues to live up to its commitments,” the Commission said in a statement. “Progress has been achieved on many of [the deal’s] elements, including a stable pace of resettlements of Syrian refugees from Turkey, and the intensified pace of work under the Facility for Refugees in Turkey.”

The Commission also said that contracts had been signed accounting for “half of the €3 billion total for 2016-2017 to improve conditions for refugees in Turkey.” It added that the “swift and efficient implementation of the facility is a clear testimony to the commitment of the EU to support Turkey and address the needs of refugees and host communities in Turkey.”

Turkish anger

Turkish officials, however, have complained that signing contracts had not translated to actual funds. Most of the €6 billion in aid called for in the agreement is funneled through third-party non-governmental organizations rather than directly to the Turkish government in an effort to provide greater accountability.

Turkish officials are also angry that there has been little to no progress on provisions in the agreement calling for enhancing Turkey’s status as part of an EU customs union, nor have any steps been taken toward visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in the EU’s Schengen zone. The criticism that followed Erdoğan’s crackdown last summer, as well as concern about Islamic State loyalists and other potential terrorists traveling to Europe through Turkey, have reduced drastically the possibility of visa-free travel for Turkish citizens.

Still, the Commission said it had “started its examination” of potential changes to the customs union.

Some Turkish officials are also hopeful that there will be a return to business as usual after the April 16 referendum. But they cautioned that the anger in Ankara is real and runs deep.

“There is deep frustration with the EU,” said an EU diplomat in close and regular contact with the Turkish government, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The message from the Turks, according to what the diplomat said, is, “The rhetoric on our side may have been high but the way the Dutch behaved toward our ministers is unacceptable.”

Ankara has complained that money under the deal “has been delivered at a snail’s pace, and only partially,” the diplomat said and that the resettlement provisions were only partially implemented. For instance, the “voluntary humanitarian admission scheme” has still not materialized. 

Some experts said that Turkey had not fulfilled its obligations under the agreement, either. Alexandra Stiglmayer, a senior analyst at the European Stability Initiative, a think tank, said she did not understand why Turkey had not spoken out sooner about the need to implement the full plan.  

“I am wondering why they haven’t done it until now and why they have not done everything to make it happen, including agreeing on the standard operating procedures for the resettlement scheme,” Stiglmayer said.  

Before the recent diplomatic feud, there was discussion of a potential EU-Turkey summit to be held after the second round of the French national elections in May. It is unclear if that summit will take place.

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