Turkish President Erdogan wants to settle refugees in Syria
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu visited al-Kamounah last week, an area in northern Syria controlled by the armed opposition to Bashar al-Assad’s regime, where tens of thousands of refugees from the rest of the country are located. The Turkish minister inaugurated a hard city there. Alignments of maisonettes in blocks called to replace the tents of the Red Crescent.
In a video message, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised the construction of thirteen cities on this model in Azaz, Tell Abyad, Jarablus and other parts of the border strip, with schools, hospitals, industrial and agricultural activity areas, all infrastructure. Objective: organize the return to their country – voluntary and honorable, he said – of one million Syrians who are in Turkey, some since 2012.
Turkey is home to 3.6 million Syrian refugees, according to the UN. And while Turks suffer from 70% inflation, cohabitation continues to tighten. Last summer, a “ratonnade” broke out in Ankara, the capital, after a fatal incident. For Erdogan, a year ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections is urgent and very dangerous.
Returning refugees would, in his view, have one advantage, not the least. The arrival of Arab Syrians would dilute the Kurdish population in northern Syria, where the Turkish army has been deployed since 2016, in order to prevent the border strip from falling under the control of the YPG militias, allied with the PKK, the Kurdish guerrilla group in Syria.
