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Abstract
In March 2016, the European Union and Turkey reached an agreement seeking to end the refugee flows from Turkey to Greece. This agreement is the outcome of a bargaining process in which Turkey gained considerable leverage from its position as a ‘gatekeeper’ situated between Syria and an increasingly ‘immigration-averse’ and securitised EU. More importantly, this bargaining process might have broader implications for the EU and its relations with its periphery, since Turkey has progressively reversed the asymmetries of power by demonstrating the indispensability of its continued commitment to act as gatekeeper vis-à-vis an increasingly fragmented and anxious EU.
Acknowledgements
For constructive comments on previous versions of the article, we would like to thank Raffaella A. Del Sarto and three anonymous referees. Research for this article was carried out in the framework of the research project ‘BORDERLANDS: Boundaries, Governance and Power in the European Union’s Relations with North Africa and the Middle East’, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under Grant Agreement Number 263277. The project is hosted at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, and directed by Raffaella A. Del Sarto.