How Angela Merkel solved one European crisis by promising another

Angela Merkel is once again taking charge of the refugee crisis. And once again, it's to disastrous effect.

Last year, after a summer of stories about refugees dying in the Mediterranean or abused by smugglers, the German chancellor stepped up and said her country would welcome one million refugees.

They got them. Since then, terrorists have used the migratory flow as cover to move about Europe and kill well over a hundred people in Paris. Cologne and other capitals have had high-profile, mob-like incidents of mass sexual assault in public.

And the reign of Merkel — popularly called "Mutti" or Mother — has come under challenge from both left and right in Germany.Turkey’s membership threatens a worse repeat of every crisis that has rocked Europe over the last decade. And many more dangers besides. And of course this deal may not even give Merkel the short-term gains she wishes to see. Refugees and migrants are still arriving in Greece. Human smugglers may shift their routes to Malta instead, or Turkey may simply find itself wishing to keep the pressure up on Merkel.

Rather than working with her European partners to create the kind of orderly and aggressively-enforced immigration controls that nations like Australia already employ with their coastal guards, Merkel is outsourcing the dirty work of enforcement to a strongman on Europe’s border. She is compromising the very European values she claims to protect and holding out a promise to Turkey that can do every bit as much damage to the European project as the status quo.

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