The interview came after European Council President Donald Tusk heaped praise on Ankara regarding its treatment of refugees.
"The EU really has to keep praising refugees in a bid to maintain this myth of Turkey being a safe country for refugees and to keep this illegal EU-Turkey deal alive," Gardner said.
He remained downbeat about the situation with the refugees being improved in the immediate future.
"What the EU should be doing instead is to persuade Turkey to open its border to have regular channels of refugee flows. In this regard, I think it's very unlikely that the situation on the Turkish-Syrian border will get any better, "he pointed out.
Late last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other top EU officials traveled to a migrant camp on the Turkish-Syrian border, in a visit that the Human Rights Watch described as a "sanitized".
The NGO said that the delegation should have visited camps on the other side of the border to see the tens of thousands of war-weary Syrian refugees blocked by Turkey from entering.
In late March, Turkey and the European Union reached an agreement to put an end to the so-called Balkan route used by migrants to travel through Greece and Macedonia to wealthier EU states.
Earlier this month, the human rights watchdog Amnesty International said that all forced returns to Syria are illegal under Turkish, EU, as well as international law, especially in light of violations the Turkish authorities commit by forcing small children without parents, pregnant women and sick people to return to Syria.
