Erdogan and finger
© shoebat.com"My way or the highway. Take it or leave it."
The EU and Turkey have reached an agreement on limiting migration to Europe during the talks in Brussels on Friday, various officials said. The Ankara government agreed to take back all undocumented migrants that had arrived to the European Union in exchange for Syrian refugees registered in Turkey on a one-for-one basis. In return, Ankara is expecting the introduction of visa-free regime in summer 2016 and financial assistance of six billion euros from the EU.

Other conditions of the deal included the protection of refugees as well as the respect for human rights and compliance with the Geneva Convention. However, Turkey apparently managed to soften the EU's demands in this field.

In the original draft of the agreement, Turkey had a "commitment" to "meet international standards" in the field of human rights. However, in the final document approved on Friday the wording was changed, with Ankara having to protect "all refugees" according to "relevant" international standards and not deport them to dangerous countries of origin, German newspaper Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) reported, referring to AFP.

What exactly the "relevant" standards are is a matter of interpretation. Human rights organizations fear that the new initiative could lead to waves of refugees' mass deportations.

Turkish authorities have been repeatedly accused of not fulfilling human rights and democracy standards. As was earlier mentioned by ECA report, even in the EU the respect for migrants' human rights often "remains theoretical and is only rarely translated into practice".