The EU promised to consider extending membership to Turkey for agreeing to the terms of the deal — a membership the Turkish government has sought since 1963.

“We today realized that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, according to the BBC.

A similar sentiment to the EU’s rejection of migrants was uttered in February by none other than Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Of those seeking refuge in the United States, “I can look at their faces and say, ‘You can’t come here,'” Trump recently said.

While Trump’s rhetoric was only words, the EU has actualized this concept, turning away refugees and migrants at their doorstep. 

Over 1 million migrants arrived in Europe in 2015, the vast majority seeking asylum from war-torn countries. More than a third of those were from Syria alone, while it, and many other countries in the region, remain in the grips of extremism, violence and political volatility. 

Rejecting fleeing migrants at the border will likely do little to resolve the profound, systemic problems associated with the crisis.