[ptaipale]

> Honest question, why should the west care about every single problem that happens anywhere in the world?

In this case, West being West Europe:

Because European Union decided to build a federal union which has freedom of movement inside, and no border controls on the outside. What happens in Turkey is directly impacting the security, safety and economy of all Europeans (except the British, who were lectured on their selfishness for not joining the Schengen area).

EU's border control was outsourced to Turkey. So, thank Jean-Claude Juncker, Barroso, Prodi, Santer.

[taway_1212]

> Because European Union decided to build a federal union which has freedom of movement inside, and no border controls on the outside

No border controls on the outside? Are you being hyperbolic or just misinformed? Of course there are border controls (their adequacy/efficiency is another matter).

[ptaipale]

The adequacy and efficiency, yes.

There are good border controls towards regions where they are not that necessary. For flight passengers from the United States, for instance. Schengen borders towards Russia are fairly solid in Norway and Finland, slightly less so but improving in Estonia, etc.

There is no effective control of entry across the Mediterranean; in fact, there is an ongoing operation which effectively works as a free taxi service for human traffickers who collect the money from passengers who are treated like cargo. The traffickers tow a rubber boat a few miles off the shore of Libya or Turkey, and leave the cargo to wait for a rescue ship with instructions to puncture the raft and expect to be picked up and taken to Europe.

Sometimes the rescue ship is out of capacity, so the people cannot be picked up, the punctured raft will sink and people drown, but this is no loss for the traffickers. We are told that we must go on with this because anything else would be "unhuman".

Upon entry, everyone has mysteriously lost their papers and everyone is admitted without any idea who they are, as long as they utter some code words.

From Turkey, people used to come across using flotation toys. Because EU couldn't get together an act of controlling the maritime border towards Turkey, the union negotiated a deal with Erdogan where Turkey acts as Europe's border control. Now EU is a hostage of Turkey because of this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/europe/turkey-recep...

[taway_1212]

I agree, EU dropped the ball on this in a major way. From what I've read, Italy (which has been flooded with illegal African immigrants for at least 10 years now) has been calling for addressing the problem, but the EU response was far from enough.

[ptaipale]

Any response will not help if the response is just working along with the human traffickers by providing the major part of the trip they sell. In fact the response is currently worsening the issue.

People absolutely would not be sent out to open sea in little rafts, if the traffickers and their cargo wouldn't know that if they just manage to float the cargo out of Libyan territorial waters, a large percentage will be picked up and therefore guaranteed entry to EU by bringing them to shore in Italy. This enables them to sell the trips. Those who drown are simply deadweight loss but as long as the proportion is not so large that it would diminish the sale of trips, it won't matter.

Whatever is the operation on sea, it won't help because the business is based on the EU asylum mechanism: once someone is picked up at sea, they cannot be returned to the nearby shore (Libya or whatever) from where they left. And once on EU ground, they'll be free to stay by applying for asylum. Italy is not hugely interested because the people know that there are no jobs in Italy, so they move on towards Germany, Sweden or trying to enter Britain through Calais or such.

It's a hard problem to solve. Most ideas seem to be about coming up with a new Gaddafi, to make a deal with him similarly to the Erdogan deal. This is not very nice either.