This article was originally published in Vol. 6 No. 2 of our print edition.
In February 2020, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stood before the cameras and announced that Türkiye would no longer stop migrants from crossing into Europe. ‘The gates are now open’, he declared.1 Within hours, Turkish authorities were transporting people by the thousands toward the Greek border at Evros. Clashes and injuries were reported, and Greek border forces, backed by Frontex, responded with force. Across the chancelleries of Europe, officials worked quickly to respond to something their legal provisions had not been designed to address: a neighbouring government deliberately routing human beings toward their borders as an act of foreign policy.
This was not a typical humanitarian crisis. It was more like a demonstration: a message sent through people and borders. The Turkish president was not surprised by what happened. He wanted to show that Europe’s external border could serve as a pressure valve and that Ankara controlled it. Most European leaders avoided saying this directly. Their reluctance makes sense, even if it is difficult to justify. Admitting that desperate people were being used as a tool to apply pressure would mean facing a hard truth: the same principles that shape Europe’s moral identity—including the right to asylum, protection of refugees, and open borders—were being used against them by those who do not share these values. That uncomfortable reality is the focus of this essay.
A Tactic with a History
The term ‘weaponized migration’ is used most often in policy conversations, but laypeople often confuse it with irregular migration in general. The difference between these terms, however, is important. Most people who cross European borders without permission do so because of poverty, conflict, or persecution—not because a government has planned their journey for political reasons. Weaponized migration means a state deliberately moves people to put pressure on another government or to gain a political advantage.2 In these cases, the migrants are not acting on their own. They are used as instruments,3 and above all, they are victims. A case in point from the Americas is Fidel Castro’s Cuba orchestrating migration crises—the Mariel crisis in 1980 and the rafters (balseros) crisis in 1994—to embarrass various US administrations.4 This difference is not simply terminological. It shapes how governments should respond, which rules apply, and how we judge those involved. Treating weaponized migration as merely a more organized version of ‘regular’ irregular migration leads to the wrong policies. It also makes it harder to identify who is responsible, which is exactly what those actors want. The cases of Belarus, Türkiye, and Morocco offer three variations on the same strategic logic, each exposing a different dimension of Europe’s exposure.
Belarus: The Operation
The 2021 Belarusian case is one of the most thoroughly documented of its kind. After the EU imposed sanctions in response to Alexander Lukashenko’s fraudulent election victory in 2020 and the brutal crackdown on the protests that followed, the regime put together a systematic campaign to push migrants toward the Polish, Lithuanian, and Latvian borders. State-controlled airlines sold what were marketed as tourist packages to people from Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—flights to Minsk, accommodation included, priced at between $2,000 and $4,000, with the tacit agreement that passage into the EU would follow. Border troops then ferried the arrivals to frontier zones in government vehicles, cut through existing fencing, and handed out tools for forcing crossings. Night-vision footage from October and November of that year caught the operation in unusual detail.5
At least 21 migrants died in the forests along the Polish border, and this figure almost certainly fails to cover all fatalities, given that aid organizations and independent media were barred from the restricted zones.6 The dead were not collateral damage in an ordinary humanitarian emergency. They were collateral damage in a hybrid military operation—one whose designers, safe and warm in Minsk, had correctly calculated that the operation’s non-military character would paralyse the EU’s response. Calls to invoke Article 4 of the NATO Treaty, which provides for consultation when a member’s territorial integrity is threatened, were floated but came to nothing. The doctrinal frameworks simply did not fit.
‘Migration is being used as a weapon’
Poland did what it could: it sent troops, passed emergency laws, and built a steel barrier over five metres high that cost more than €400 million. The European Commission, human rights groups, and European courts all criticised these actions. Some of this criticism was fair, since conditions at the border were harsh and legal rules were not always followed. But the debate was unbalanced. Warsaw was judged by laws meant for peacetime humanitarian situations, while Minsk faced no similar scrutiny. That imbalance was intentional. It was the central pillar of the strategy.
Türkiye: The Deal and Its Discontents
The Turkish case is structurally different, and in some respects more troubling because it reveals how Europe itself constructed the leverage that was later used against it. The 2016 EU–Türkiye Statement committed Ankara to preventing irregular departures from Turkish territory in exchange for €6 billion in financial support, visa liberalization dialogue, and the revival of accession talks.7 The arrangement worked, after a fashion: Aegean crossings fell sharply in the months following the agreement. But it also created a durable mechanism of dependency. EU border control had been subcontracted to a non-member state with its own interests, ambitions, and its own reading of the bargain.
‘Europe has no policy for dealing with state-driven migration as a form of hybrid pressure’
Erdoğan’s announcement in March 2020 did not mean the deal had collapsed. Instead, it showed what the deal really was: a signal that Türkiye could open the border as easily as it could close it, and that Ankara, not Brussels, would set the price for keeping it shut. The timing was deliberate, since tensions over Idlib and the Eastern Mediterranean were high. For Türkiye, migration is not simply a problem to manage—it is a tool. Europe gave this tool its value with the 2016 agreement and has been paying for it ever since.
Spain and Morocco: Capitulation Through Managed Migration
The Spanish case is the third—and perhaps the clearest—example of migration being used as a tool of pressure, and succeeding. In May 2021, after Madrid agreed to provide medical treatment to Brahim Ghali, the leader of the Polisario Front, Morocco largely stopped enforcing the border near Ceuta, Spain’s exclave in North Africa. Rabat saw Spain’s decision as a political challenge and responded quickly. In about two days, around 10,000 people, including many unaccompanied minors, crossed into Spain. Moroccan officials did not hide what was happening or why. This was not a border failure or a sudden surge. It was a clear message.
What happened in Madrid in the following months was striking. In March 2022, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez supported Morocco’s plan for Western Sahara, breaking with more than 70 years of Spanish policy. No one in the Spanish government officially linked this change to the events in Ceuta, but the timing is hard to ignore. After seeing thousands cross its border in just two days, Spain changed its position on a major foreign policy issue. The pressure was effective.
The wider migration dynamic between Spain and Morocco points to a more structural factor. The geography of irregular migration into Spain is not simply the product of economic conditions or individual decisions made by people on the move. The distribution of flows—across the Western Mediterranean, the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands, and the land borders at the North African exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla—closely tracks the degree of cooperation Moroccan authorities decide to extend at any given moment.
The dramatic changes observed in recent years are difficult to explain otherwise. During 2024, arrivals to the Canary Islands surged to record levels as the Atlantic route became the principal gateway into Spain. Yet in 2025, arrivals to the archipelago fell by approximately 62 per cent, dropping from nearly 47,000 to fewer than 18,000 migrants. Spanish authorities credited the decline largely to boosted migration-control cooperation involving Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal. At the same time, however, irregular arrivals increased by 24.5 per cent in the Balearic Islands, while entries into Ceuta and Melilla rose by almost 44 per cent. Overall, irregular arrivals to Spain fell from 64,019 in 2024 to 36,775 in 2025, a 42.6 per cent reduction.8 Yet the decline was accompanied by a striking geographical redistribution of pressure, rather than its elimination.
The significance of this shift should not be underestimated. Unlike the Atlantic route, where departures depend on a chain of transit countries stretching across West Africa and the Sahel, irregular entries into Ceuta and Melilla are almost entirely dependent on decisions made in Rabat. Every person attempting to cross the fences, approach the border infrastructure, or reach Spanish territory through the enclaves must first be allowed to reach the border from inside Morocco. As a result, fluctuations in arrivals at Ceuta and Melilla are probably the clearest available indicator of Morocco’s willingness to manage migration pressure. When Moroccan authorities decide to enforce controls seriously, crossings drop to negligible levels. When enforcement is loosened, figures rise quickly. The events of May 2021 made this reality hard to dispute.
The same logic applies to the Atlantic route, though less directly. Migrants travelling from Mali, Senegal, Guinea, and other West African countries do not wash up on the shores of the Canary Islands by chance. They first have to move through a long corridor running through Mauritania and, in many cases, Moroccan territory or areas under Moroccan influence, before reaching any departure point. The sharp drop in arrivals to the Canary Islands in 2025, following renewed cooperation agreements with Morocco, Mauritania, and Senegal, illustrates that the route does not simply respond to autonomous migratory forces. It expands when transit states are willing to let movement through, and contracts when they are not. In practice, Rabat exerts considerable influence over whether migrants are allowed to continue northward toward embarkation points or are stopped before they reach them.
‘Whether migration should be treated primarily as a humanitarian issue or as a matter of sovereignty and national security must also be addressed’
This shows that migration management is primarily political,9 not just a humanitarian or demographic issue. Morocco can not only increase or decrease migration pressure on Spain, but also shift it to different places. Pressure can focus on the Canary Islands, move to the Western Mediterranean, or go through Ceuta and Melilla, depending on Morocco’s diplomatic goals and how much it wants to cooperate. Migration is not simply a shared problem—it is a tool that can be adjusted to fit wider political aims.
Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series (1940–1941). The Phillips Collection – The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, USA SOURCE: Wikipedia
Spain’s internal response has worsened this weakness. Disputes between Madrid and the autonomous regions, especially over how to handle unaccompanied minors, show that Spain struggles to deal with outside pressure. Legal battles like the Aragón case over migrant distribution show how migration crises quickly turn into domestic political fights. This creates a cycle: Morocco takes advantage of Spain’s divided institutions, and Spain’s internal disagreements make Morocco’s pressure more effective.
Unlike in Italy, where migration has mostly been used as a threat, Spain shows how ongoing managed migration can lead to real foreign policy changes and long-term dependence on a neighbour’s cooperation. The 2022 policy shift on Western Sahara, along with Morocco’s ongoing control over migration routes, suggests that Spain is not just vulnerable to migration pressure, but now explicitly relies on Morocco’s restraint. This makes Spain one of the clearest examples in Europe of diplomacy formed by the deliberate use of migration.
The Structural Asymmetry
These three cases share a common pattern. There are few limits to the uses authoritarian countries can make of migration as a weapon. Their leaders make decisions centrally, face few legal restrictions, and do not worry much about their reputations. Lukashenko’s regime ignored criticism from European courts. Morocco did not consider ethics before easing border controls at Ceuta. Erdoğan did not check whether his actions fit with EU asylum law.
Liberal democracies face pressures that their rivals do not. They must follow international refugee law and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Their institutions are divided at many levels. Any tough response brings political risks at home. They also work hard to appear humane. These are not weaknesses—in most cases, they are real strengths. But they become vulnerable when others create situations meant to take advantage of them.
Hungary’s experience is important to consider. During the 2015 migration crisis, Budapest was among the first to say that large-scale irregular migration was not merely a humanitarian issue but also about sovereignty, border security, and state capacity. Most debates focused on Hungary’s tone and language, not on its main point: that controlling migration can give outside actors geopolitical power. Ten years later, the cases of Belarus, Türkiye, and Morocco show this was a real vulnerability, not just an ideological concern. European legislators now find it harder to ignore.
Hannah Arendt wrote that a stateless person is deprived not just of citizenship but of ‘the right to have rights’—that human rights, however universally proclaimed, require a political community capable of guaranteeing them.10 This means that if a society cannot keep its own political community together, it cannot guarantee rights to anyone, even those it wants to help. If Europe gives up control of its borders, it does not become more humane. Instead, it becomes a stage for other countries’ coercive actions, with real people caught in the middle.
The Gap in the Framework
The 2023 EU Pact on Migration and Asylum represents a genuine effort to systematize Europe’s approach to irregular migration.11 Screening procedures, accelerated border processing, and a solidarity mechanism between member states are meaningful reforms. But the Pact contains a critical blind spot: it treats all irregular arrivals under essentially the same legal and procedural framework, regardless of whether their movement was spontaneous, facilitated, or deliberately orchestrated by a hostile state. It has no category for weaponization.
This gap is not merely administrative. It reflects a deeper reluctance—in Brussels, in national capitals, and in the legal culture of European institutions—to even acknowledge that migration can function as an instrument of coercion. To do so would require treating the question as one of security as well as humanitarianism, and would necessitate the development of attribution and response mechanisms that resemble those used in hybrid-warfare doctrine; it would, in short, require thinking about migration in terms that European liberal politics has spent decades actively resisting.
Lithuania’s emergency legislative response to the Belarusian operation—expedited procedures, military deployment, measures subsequently examined and substantially validated by the European Commission as proportionate—suggests that the gap can be partially closed through legislative innovation when the political will exists. The operative condition is the last one.
What Is to Be Done
The core problem is clear: Europe has no policy for dealing with state-driven migration as a form of hybrid pressure. There are no agreed-upon rules for identifying which state is behind such actions. There is no legal or systematic way to distinguish between spontaneous and engineered migration. The current legal system, built for peacetime humanitarian needs, often punishes frontline states for doing what the situation demands.
This does not mean giving up the ideals that define Europe. It means creating institutions and laws that still work even when those values are being used against Europe. Recognizing that authoritarian governments can create mass asylum claims for their own goals does not weaken the right to asylum. Humanitarian duties do not vanish just because they can be used as pressure. The goal is to build systems that can tell the difference and respond appropriately.
At a minimum, that means several things. A formal doctrine for identifying and responding to state-directed migration as a hybrid threat, developed through the European External Action Service (EEAS). At the very least, this requires a few steps. Europe needs a formal policy for identifying and responding to state-driven migration as a hybrid threat, developed in coordination with the EEAS, Frontex, and national intelligence agencies. EU migration laws should recognize coerced migration as a separate category. Agreements like the EU–Türkiye deal need stronger checks and balances, since the existing setup gives Ankara too much leverage. Member states also need better coordination across all levels of government, since outside pressure often targets weak spots. Whether migration should be treated primarily as a humanitarian issue or as a matter of sovereignty and national security must also be addressed. Whatever one’s assessment of the policies pursued by successive Hungarian governments, the wider European experience has gradually blurred the distinction between these two categories. The cases examined here demonstrate that migration can be instrumentalized by foreign governments to pursue strategic objectives.
Hungary’s main challenge in the coming years is not whether migration will continue to be an important issue in politics, but how future governments will handle it. It is unclear whether the new Hungarian government will continue to focus on border control and resisting migration pressure or choose a different path. If it changes course, it will probably be to please Brussels rather than because of strong support from Hungarian voters. After all, Orbán’s migration policy remained popular in Hungary, even after years of EU sanctions and legal battles that affected citizens.
In the end, Hungary’s debate is just one example of a bigger European issue. The reforms suggested here are not extreme or impossible. They mostly require political will, not major institutional changes. The real question is whether Europe’s leaders can openly admit what is happening: that migration is being used as a weapon, that this is a form of aggression, and that responding to it does not mean giving up humanitarian values. Until leaders can say this clearly, borders will remain open to those who know how to exploit them.
NOTES
1 Carlotta Gall, ‘Erdogan Says, “We Opened the Doors”, and Clashes Erupt as Migrants Head for Europe’, The New York Times (29 February 2020), www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/world/europe/Türkiye-migrants-eu.html.
2 Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (PublicAffairs, 2004).
3 Éva Eszter Szabó, ‘Migration as a Tool of U.S. Foreign Policy in the Cold War’, Hungarian Review, 8/3 (May 2017), 75–88. www.hungarianreview.com/article/20170517_migration_as_a_tool_of_us_foreign_policy_in_the_cold_war.
4 Éva Eszter Szabó, U.S. Foreign and Immigration Policies in the Caribbean Basin (Savaria University Press, 2007), 176–210.
5 ‘Violence and Pushbacks at Poland–Belarus Border’, Human Rights Watch (7 June 2022), www.hrw.org/news/2022/06/07/violence-and-pushbacks-poland-belarus-border.
6 ‘Poland–Belarus Border Crisis: “We Don’t Want People to Die in the Forest”’, Relief Web, United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) (3 February 2022), https://reliefweb.int/report/poland/poland-belarus-border-crisis-we-don-t-want-people-die-forest.
7 Elizabeth Collett, ‘The EU–Türkiye Deal, Five Years On: A Frayed and Controversial but Enduring Blueprint’, Migration Policy Institute (8 March 2021), www.migrationpolicy.org/article/eu-Türkiye-deal-five-years-on.
8 Inmigración Irregular 2025: Datos acumulados del 1 de enero al 31 de diciembre de 2025 (Irregular Immigration 2025: Data Accumulated from 1 January to 31 December 2025) (Ministry of the Interior, Government of Spain, 2025), www.interior.gob.es/opencms/export/sites/default/.galleries/galeria-de-prensa/documentos-y-multimedia/balances-e-informes/2025/23_informe_quincenal_acumulado_01-01_al_31-12-2025.pdf.
9 José Ignacio Torreblanca, ‘Spain and Morocco: Ceuta and the Dangers of Migration Weaponisation’, Policy Brief, European Council on Foreign Relations (June 2021), https://ecfr.eu/publication/spain-and-morocco-ceuta-and-the-dangers-of-migration-weaponisation.
10 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1951).
11 ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, European Commission, Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/pact-migration-and-asylum_en, accessed 15 May 2026.
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