Analysts said Erdoğan’s move risks damaging efforts at normalization with Armenia while noting that treating Armenians living in Turkey illegally as a political trump card does not befit Turkey, which is famous for its hospitality.Acknowledging that foreign citizens may stay in Turkey for three months at the most, Yeni Şafak’s Fehmi Koru says anyone who tries to stay in the country longer than this period illegally can be deported. Nevertheless, Koru points out that if Prime Minister Erdoğan acts the way he said he would in London and 100,000 illegal Armenian workers are deported from the country, such a move is likely to deal a heavy blow to the efforts at normalization between Turkey and Armenia. In light of this, Koru says deporting the illegal Armenian workers will not have any positive effect on rapprochement efforts with Armenia.
Taking into consideration the fact that Erdoğan’s statements about deporting illegal Armenian workers has disturbed Western countries, Bugün’s Ahmet Taşgetiren wonders how EU countries would react if illegal Armenian workers flocked to Europe for work. “There is an unemployment problem, in Turkey and there are still 100,000 illegal workers. I wonder whether the EU [which wants Turkey to stop people from entering the country illegally and implement biometric passports so that visa requirements for Turks can be eliminated] sees the entry of these 100,000 Armenians to Turkey as ‘illegal entry’ and views these people crossing into the EU as dangerous. I wonder whether they have an opportunist idea suggesting that those Armenians should neither be sent back to their homeland or European countries and stay in Turkey. If only Erdoğan had appealed to the EU nations while he was in London and said: ‘You accept the entry of these 100,000 Armenians in Europe and employ them. This would very much fit the humanitarian sensitivities of Europe.’ Would they accept such a proposal? What do you think? Would they exhibit an example of humanitarian sensitivity?” asks Taşgetiren.
Milliyet’s Can Dündar, who says the real number of illegal Armenian workers in Turkey is just 10,000, not 100,000 as Erdoğan said, thinks that Turkey treating these workers as a bargaining tool, as if they were hostages, is very serious, serious enough to add another allegation to the centuries-long allegations about Turkey. He suggests that if diplomats want to make the world believe that Turkey has developed humane and friendly relations with the Armenians, they should start this by stopping the prime minister.
Akşam’s Nagehan Alçı is also of the opinion that using a community living in our country as a tool for political maneuver does not befit a country such as Turkey, which is famous for its hospitability. “In which ethical understanding is it fit to use illegal workers as a trump card when a country is cornered?” asks Alçı.
