Turkey calls on world leaders to share burden of migrant crisis

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has issued a call for better international cooperation in sharing the burden of addressing the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

Erdogan spoke Monday in Istanbul at a two-day United Nations-backed summit that convened against the backdrop of a massive migration into Turkey of Syrian and Iraqi civilians fleeing years of war, MI reported.

Analysts say the presence of 3 million migrants on Turkish soil makes the country the world’s largest host of displaced people — part of what the U.N. calls the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.

Despite skeptics who question whether the summit can produce results, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on delegates and heads of state from more than 60 nations to "resolve ourselves here and now not only to keep people alive, but to give people a chance at life in dignity."

Amnesty International on Monday cited what it described as the "complete collapse of humanitarian law" in Turkey, and accused the European Union of "looking the other way when it comes to rights violations in Turkey itself."

For his part, Turkey’s Erdogan has argued that the dual threats facing his country from Kurdish militants in the region, coupled with increasing incidents of ISIS terrorism, call for strengthening anti-terror laws rather than curtailing them, VOA reported.