TURKEY is playing hard to get in response to European Union efforts to persuade Ankara to stem the flow of refugees across the Aegean to Greece.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is in no hurry to expedite an agreement, calculating that EU leaders’ desperation will persuade them to increase their offer of €3 billion to Ankara to care for refugees on Turkish soil.

He is justified in deriding suggestions that German Chancellor Angela Merkel should be nominated for the Nobel peace prize for opening Germany to so many refugees this year.

As Erdogan says, Turkey has 2.5 million refugees, but the EU is only concerned about this in so far as it fears a potential new wave into the bloc.

Germany has accepted refugees equating to less than a quarter of 1 per cent of its population while the figure for Turkey is over 2 per cent.

However, these numbers are dwarfed by both Lebanon and Jordan, which accept refugees, as a proportion of their populations, to the tune of 23 per cent and 8.7 per cent.

Refugees based in these two countries who decide to seek asylum in Europe find their way to Turkey, which makes Lebanon and Jordan, in EU leaders’ eyes, non-priorities for large-scale humanitarian aid.

Misery experienced by Syrians in refugee camps in these two countries means little to EU leaders.

Turkey remains the key for the EU, as European Council president Donald Tusk made clear yesterday.

He declared that intensive talks with Turkish leaders had “one goal — stemming the migratory flows that go via Turkey to the EU. The action plan is a major step in this direction.”

To sweeten the cash deal, the EU is dangling the possibility of easing visa restrictions for Turkish citizens and breathing life into Ankara’s long-stalled application for EU membership.

Erdogan may not be as impressed by these offers as his interlocutors believe he should be.

He knows that Cyprus will, justifiably, veto Turkey’s entry as long as Ankara’s military occupation of a third of the island persists.

In any case, Erdogan has told European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker that free access to the Schengen area for all Turkish citizens is the price of any deal to take back asylum-seekers entering the EU from Turkey.

It is as unlikely as Juncker’s other proposal for joint Greek-Turkish naval patrols throughout the Aegean, which takes no account of ongoing bilateral tensions.

The EU proposals have their roots in member states’ political self-regard — how to minimise electoral harm by tackling the perceived problem of migration that exercises voters and media.

They are less interested in the wellbeing of the refugees or in ending the conflict in Syria except on the basis of outsiders deciding on the country’s political leadership.

Turkey is as guilty as its allies in Nato and the Arab world in this regard, providing secure rear bases and acting as a conduit for Islamic State (Isis) terrorists and supplies in exchange for looted oil.

While paying lip service to the need combat Isis, Ankara prioritises opposition to Syria’s Assad government and the Syrian Kurdish forces who have been most effective in fighting Isis.

The EU must realise that armed conflict — usually instigated by imperialist powers — in Syria and other countries is the principal reason for refugees seeking asylum in Europe.

Self-interest and concern for those fleeing conflict combine to dictate the need for a novel approach based on concern for humanity and negotiations to end the war in Syria.