Turkey cannot cope with the “next wave of refugees” from Syria, the country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Sunday (December 22).
Speaking at the award ceremony in Istanbul, he said that more than 80,000 people fled from the Syrian city of Idlib to the border with Turkey amid increased bombardments.
“If the violence against the people of Idlib does not stop, this number will increase even more. In this case, Turkey itself will not bear such a burden from migrants, ”he said.
3 million people live in Idlib province, and it is the last stronghold of the rebels in the armed rebellion of militants against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
Turkey has 3.7 million Syrian refugees, the highest in the world.
In 2015, 1 million refugees passed through Turkey to Europe, which caused the so-called migration crisis.
Erdogan has now warned of a new refugee crisis in Europe, stating that “the negative consequences of this pressure on us will be a problem that all European countries, especially Greece, feel.”