Turkey hosts Syrian refugees more than any other country

Turkey hosts Syrian refugees more than any other country
Since Assad began sending snipers to shoot at peaceful protesters at the beginning of the Syrian revolution, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been there to support the Syrian people being targeted by the Assad regime.

In the years before the revolution began in March 2011, the Turkish government had close ties with Damascus but by the beginning of August, Assad forces had killed over 2,000 civilians and Erdogan, who was Prime Minister of Turkey at the time, announced that his government has reached "the end of our patience" with Syria and sent then Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Syria to deliver a firm message to Assad that enough was enough.

When Assad ignored the warnings from his former friend as well as similar warnings from the UN and other world leaders, Erdogan opened Turkey’s borders to those Syrians trying to escape from the violence in their homeland.

He called upon the Turkish people to view them as their brothers and sisters and said that helping them was the right thing to do.

Although the almost three million Syrians who are now living in Turkey are referred to by most as refugees, technically they are not.

Erdogan, who was elected as Turkey’s president in 2014 after serving the maximum amount of years as prime minister, has always referred to Syrians as guests of Turkey who have been granted temporary protected status.

Recently journalist Kerem Kocalar of the Anadolu Agency (AA) spoke with Syrians living in a Turkish refugee camp in Gaziantep who expressed deep gratitude towards Turkey, saying their country’s northern neighbor had effectively saved their lives, provided for them and treated them like brothers.

"We haven’t seen refugee camps in other countries, but those who did say this place is like a palace in comparison,” Sih Diyab Ferruh, who lives in the camp with his four children, told AA.

Ferruh said the he fled from Aleppo with his family four years ago and settled at a refugee camp in Nizip in Turkey’s southeastern city of Gaziantep. 

He is thankful for the welcome they received and said that he prays for the country that has provided his family with a temporary home where they are safe from harm.

"One day Syria will be free again and we will go back to our homes. We won’t forget what Turkey and Erdogan did," Ferruh told AA.

Abu Ahmed, a former Syrian civil servant, told AA that he has eight children and has also been living in camps for four years.

"Turkey has treated us like brothers. It opened its doors. May Allah bless it. If Turkey did not exist, we would probably be dead now," he added.

Sheikh Mohammed, who fled from the city of Kobane near the Syria-Turkey border, told AA that the Assad regime had always alienated him even before the war. 

He added that he has been at the camp for a year and that every day he prays for Turkey as well as the liberation of his homeland.

Approximately 260,000 displaced Syrians are currently living in camps that have been formed in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern provinces of Hatay, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Kilis, Mardin, Kahramanmaras, Osmaniye, Adiyaman, Adana, and Malatya.

Some of the camps have been transformed into modern living spaces with infrastructure, social spaces, healthcare facilities, and education services with the help of a variety of institutions and humanitarian organizations.

Until now Turkey has absorbed more displaced Syrians than any other country in the world and has spent about $ 25 billion USD helping and sheltering them since 2011. 

Although the UN stopped counting several years ago because of their inability to gather accurate statistics, an estimated 500,000 people have been killed inside Syria and more than half the country’s pre-revolution population of 23 million are now either internally or externally displaced.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been wounded and many of them are now living with permanent disabilities due mainly to being targeted by the bombs of the Assad regime and its ally Russia.

In addition to offering shelter, Turkey has also provided free medical care for those who were wounded in Syria.

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