Turkey’s Human Wave Assault on the West

For months, Western policymakers have agonized over what to do with the masses of Sunni Muslim migrants flooding Europe by the boatload, particularly Syrians. Largely missing from this discussion is the question of why this flood is happening.
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Turkey’s Human Wave Assault on the West
A migrant boat arrives after making the crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos, in Sikaminias, Greece, on Nov. 12, 2015. Rafts and boats continue to make the journey from Turkey to Lesbos each day as thousands flee conflict in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and other countries. Over 500,000 migrants have entered Europe so far this year and approximately four-fifths of those have paid to be smuggled by sea to Greece from Turkey, the main transit route into the EU. Carl Court/Getty Images
Gregg Roman
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For months, Western policymakers have agonized over what to do with the masses of Sunni Muslim migrants flooding Europe by the boatload, particularly Syrians. Largely missing from this discussion is the question of why this flood is happening.

For starters, it doesn’t have much to do directly with the civil war in Syria or the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS). The vast majority of the 886,662 migrants who illegally entered Europe this year embarked from Turkey, a little over half of them Syrians who took shelter in the country over the past four years. “EU officials have said ... Ankara was very effective in previous years in preventing the outflow of refugees from the country,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

What caused the spike in migration is that Ankara stopped containing it.
Gregg Roman
Gregg Roman
Author
Gregg Roman is director and COO of the Middle East Forum. Mr. Roman previously served as director of the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh. In 2014, he was named one of the ten most inspiring global Jewish leaders by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He previously served as the political advisor to the deputy foreign minister of Israel and worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defense. Mr. Roman is a frequent speaker at venues around the world, often appears on television, and has written for the Hill, the Forward, the Albany Times-Union, and other publications. He attended American University in Washington, D.C., and the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, Israel, where he studied national security studies and political communications.
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