Erdogan wants 1mn refugees to be resettled in Syria ‘very soon’

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Tuesday for the resettlement of 1 million Syrian refugees in their homeland in “a very short period of time.” Turkey hosts 3.7 million Syrian refugees, the largest refugee population worldwide.

Erdogan said more than 600,000 should voluntarily join around 371,000 already in a “peace zone” in northern Syria from which Turkey drove Kurdish militia.

“We need to find a formula that will allow the refugees to remain in their homelands and the ones who have already traveled to Turkey to be peacefully returned and resettled in their homelands,” he said at the Global Forum on Refugees in Geneva.

Taking a thinly veiled swipe at the US, the Turkish president said: “Unfortunately the efforts that were spared to protect the oil fields were not mobilized for the safety and security of the children in Syria,” Reuters reports.