BERLIN — With as many as 1 million refugees having arrived in Germany this year, Chancellor Angela Merkel has found herself increasingly isolated in Europe and markedly less popular at home than she was during the crisis over the euro last spring.
So far, she has rejected all requests — the loudest from her own conservative bloc — to limit the influx of newcomers. Even as Germany runs short of physical shelter, she argues that it is both uncharitable and physically unworkable to halt the human flow into a country with thousands of miles of land borders and a post-Nazi obligation to liberally offer asylum.
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Yet what she and other European leaders have quietly done over recent weeks is tighten asylum policy, restrict family reunions for refugees, and mount campaigns to keep people from setting out for Europe. Balkan nations on the migrant trail that leads north from Turkey and Greece to Germany and Sweden have been encouraged to bar all but Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees.
The new policy of steering or reducing the human flow culminates in a summit meeting of the 28-nation European Union with Turkey on Sunday. A measure of Merkel's need to ease the refugee burden is that European leaders called the meeting in Brussels despite the terror alerts in that city after the deadly attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.
In exchange for better patrolling its Aegean coastline with Greece and cracking down on human smuggling, Turkey seeks 3 billion euros, about $3.2 billion, to help care for the 2.2 million mostly Syrian refugees it now houses. In addition, Europe is likely to pursue stalled negotiations on Turkish membership in the EU and extend visa-free travel to many Turks.
Merkel used to oppose EU membership for Turkey, and Europe has had many misgivings about human rights under Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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But the expected agreement with Turkey — still being haggled over — is a measure of Merkel's pursuit of pragmatic goals no matter how contradictory her policy appears.
Merkel has also shifted on the refugee issue, said Daniela Schwarzer, director of the Europe program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
"Definitely, she is changing the very liberal and nonconditional stance that she took in the summer when she said we will take in the Syrians, we need to," Schwarzer said. "The rhetoric has changed."
Beyond the shortage of physical shelter and needing to use volunteers to provide refugee care that was once regarded as a state task, Merkel is keenly aware not just of the slide in her approval ratings but of the rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party.
The party now regularly polls above the 5 percent hurdle any party must clear to get into state or federal parliaments. In eastern Germany, the anti-Islam Pegida movement, once fading from view, draws thousands to weekly marches in Dresden.