Migrants and asylum seekers wait for a bus after crossing the Macedonian-Serbian border near the village of Miratovac yesterday. Tens of thousands - many fleeing violence in Syria, Africa and Afghanistan - have been making their way from Turkey to the Balkans in recent months, hoping to reach Germany, Sweden and other EU states.

By Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl/DPA/Brussels

The relationship between Turkey and the European Union never was a particularly harmonious one.
Up until a few months ago, the negotiations on the country joining the 28-country bloc had been largely written off after a decade of halting talks. The two sides repeatedly lobbed criticism at each other amid growing concerns about Ankara’s human rights record.
But everything changed by October 5, the balmy autumn day when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to Brussels for talks with top EU officials on controlling the flow of migrants streaming towards Europe.
They described Turkey as “a proud nation” whose concerns must be taken into account. Criticism gave way to praise for Turkey taking in 2mn Syrians although the refugees are barred from working and few of their children attend school, fuelling a desire to leave.
The EU’s top concern now is stemming the flow of migrants and asylum seekers amid worries that many more could arrive as the Syrian war intensifies. And Turkey happens to be the country through which most of the refugees transit.
“We need the Turkish side,” EU President Donald Tusk said after meeting Erdogan.
In what critics have decried as a “dirty deal” and a “bribe,” Brussels is offering Turkey more aid and closer ties in exchange for help on the refugee crisis - a barter driven home at the weekend by a visit from Europe’s most powerful leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to Istanbul.
Talks with Erdogan were “sensible” and “successful,” Merkel was cited as saying by a German delegation source.
But Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian governing has in recent years outraged Western European partners.
“Those who in this moment let Erdogan roll out a red carpet [for them] are walking over dead bodies,” Sevim Dagdelen, a far-left German parliamentarian of Turkish origin, charged last week, speaking of a “political wave of persecution” in Turkey against journalists, trade unionists, Kurds, Armenians and Alawites.
“Of course, the respect for human rights and the situation of the Kurds continue to worry us,” Merkel said in an interview published Sunday in the Germany daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
But some diplomats in Brussels privately acknowledged that the EU’s values have taken a back seat to its interests in the refugee crisis, which has already strained resources in the unprepared bloc and laid bare divisions between its member states.
“They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, really,” said Amanda Paul, an analyst at the Brussels-based European Policy Centre.
“This new approach is based on realpolitik,” she said. “I guess they realise that some of their credibility is going to be eroded.”
But securing Turkey’s support appears far from being a done deal.
“We cannot accept a mindset of ‘We have given this [money], Turkey is satisfied and the refugees shall now remain in Turkey,’” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told the broadcaster A Haber on Monday.
“No one can expect that Turkey becomes a country in which all refugees stay like in a concentration camp,” he said.
Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu has called on the EU, which has seen around 651,000 migrants arrive this year, to shoulder more of that burden.
Paul said anyone who expected a quick agreement with Turkey would have been “quite naive” after years of broken promises, battered trust and “ill feelings” between Ankara and Brussels.
“The EU’s track record of reneging on agreements with Turkey and their failure to provide promised funds for political gestures all have to be taken into account,” former government adviser Ilnur Cevik wrote in Turkey’s Daily Sabah newspaper.
“It is clear that ... Ankara has decided to put the pressure on the EU at this opportune moment to extract concessions,” he said.
But Turkey’s demands are sure to push EU buttons.
Ankara has requested three times more refugee aid than the bloc had proposed, a demand that will be hard to meet with the EU’s purse strings tightened by the economic crisis and shrinking budgets.
Turkey would also like to see its citizens get easier access to EU visas, but Brussels is insisting that Ankara must first allow undocumented immigrants caught in the EU after travelling through Turkey to be returned to Turkey. Turkish officials, on the other hand, said visa concessions should come first.
But the most sensitive demand is likely to be progress on Turkey’s EU membership, which the country has been seeking since 1987. The negotiations have frequently ground to a halt, mostly because of Franco-German opposition and tensions with Cyprus.
“I think this is rather a non-starter,” Paul said. “Even if they do unblock [negotiating] chapters, it’s not going to make the political will in the EU for Turkish accession any stronger.”
“To open a negotiation on some chapters, it’s a process,” Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said last week after a summit of EU leaders. “It’s not an obligation of results.”