Turkey: We have reached our limit but we will take in more refugees

Turkey has reached the end of its “capacity to absorb” refugees but will continue to take them in, the deputy premier said Sunday. The country had given shelter to 3 million refugees, including 2.5 million Syrians, while another tens of thousands more have massed on its border after fleeing fighting in Aleppo, said deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus. “Turkey has reached the end of its capacity to absorb (refugees),” he added in a TV interview. “But in the end, these people have nowhere else to go. Either they will die beneath the bombings and Turkey will … watch the massacre like the rest of the world, or we will open our borders.”

We are not in a position to tell them not to come. If we do, we would be abandoning them to their deaths.

Deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmus

Mr Kurtulmus said 15,000 refugees from Syria were admitted in the past few days and put the number of refugees being cared for on the other side of the border at 30,000. "At the moment, we are admitting some, and are trying to keep others there (in Syria) by providing them with every kind of humanitarian support,“ he added. However, the Turkish border gate at Oncupinar, opposite the Bab al-Salameh crossing in Syria, was being kept closed on Sunday. Syrians have been massing there after weeks of intense fighting in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and one-time commercial center, now encircled by government forces.

The people there are very worried there could be a siege at any time. We expect a lot of people to get out of the city if the situation remains like this, if there is no improvement

Dr Ahmad Abdelaziz, of the Syrian American Medical Society

aleppo