(English) Interview To The BBC World Service On The Issue Of EU Response To The Illegal Immigration- 2, November 2010

CHP BURSA MİLLETVEKİLİ SAYIN ONUR ÖYMEN’İN BBC WORLD SERVICE VERDİĞİ MÜLAKAT
2 KASIM 2010

Sunucu: On the issue of illegal immigration to the EU countries by crossing Turkey borders and EU response to this issue, what are you going to say?

Onur Öymen: Well, those are not Turks, they are coming from different countries to Turkey or to Eastern European countries. They want to cross the borders to reach other European Union countries. That is called as illegal immigration.

Sunucu: In this respect, what is Turkish government doing in order to prevent such attempts?

Onur Öymen: Turkish government is doing a lot of efforts. We have detained a number of persons who wanted to cross the borders illegally, or wanting to cross Aegean Sea to reach Greek Islands. But, probably, it would not be possible to stop each and every person who want to cross illegally particularly using the Aegean Sea.

In Joint Parliamentary Committee, we tabled joint resolutions together with EU representatives aiming and suggesting the ways and means to solve the illegal immigration problem and also to solve the problem of travel of the Turkish citizens to EU schengen countries without visa. This is being implemented all the applicant states but in this case Turkey is the only exception. Turkish citizens are suffering from this since the EU says that unless Turkey signes the repatriation agreement on illegal immigration, we will not allow Turkish citizens’ travel to the schengen countries without visa.