Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking at the short film festival "Mercy and Justice", organized by Çekmeköy Istanbul Municipality, accused the EU countries for "dictatorship" and "cruelty" for closing their borders for asylum seekers from Middle East, noting that the EU has no "mercy" and no "justice".
Earlier this week Erdogan refused to change Turkey's anti-terrorism legislation, as it was meant by the Turkey-EU deal, orchestrated by PM Ahmet Davutoglu, saying that Europe should first remove tents of Kurdish "terrorists" from the square at the EU Headquarters in Brussels. As Erdogan put it, the demand to change Turkish legislation came at a time when the country is under constant threat of terrorist attacks.
According to the deal, Turkey was to accept a significant amount of migrants that used Turkey to illegally cross the EU border. In exchange, the EU was to provide, among other things, visa-free travel for Turkish tourists. However, in order to fulfill this deal, Turkey was to change its own anti-terrorism legislation, which Erdogan refused to do.
Experts have expressed concern that the EU-Turkey deal may fall apart if Turkey does not agree to changes in the anti-terrorism law.
Erdogan's words against the EU came after Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who negotiated the EU-Turkey deal, announced he would step down later this month, following a rift with Erdogan.
