Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Tuesday, made a call to the world powers to extract Syrian oil and spend its revenues for the refugees who will be resettled in the Syrian north.
This came in a speech during his participation in the World Refugee Forum, the United Nations Office in the Swiss city of Geneva.
Erdogan cited a phrase she wrote on the walls of the city of Aleppo: “If our children were pouring oil instead of blood, they would enter the world immediately” saying: “we explain very clearly the human tragedy in Syria 9 years ago, so the efforts made to protect the oil wells weren’t made for the children fleeing from Barrel bombs to save their lives”.
Erdogan added: “Let us extract oil together from terrorist-controlled wells in Syria, and complete construction projects for housing units, schools, and hospitals in the liberated areas, and we reside in the refugees… but we don’t see a response to this call, because oil is more important to them”.
Erdogan made it clear that the refugee problem can only be solved by taking steps at a global level.
He continued: “Countries with substantial financial capabilities that are much larger than us have decided to receive a certain number of refugees, while Turkey has welcomed all of them without distinction between their religions, ethnicities, and languages”.
And he added: “Except for individual cases, Turkey has not witnessed any incidents of marginalization of refugees or hostilities, and it is necessary to apply the formulas that will keep refugees in their countries and return those in our country to their homeland”.
He pointed out that it is not possible for any country in the world to look at the refugee problem from the perspective of distance and geographical distance, noting that there are 260 million immigrants, about 25 million refugees and 71 displaced people around the world at the present time.
He added that the migration, asylum and displacement taking place around the world are caused by the deteriorating economic conditions, poverty, internal wars, terrorist attacks and political ambiguity.
“People are risking their lives to reach a dignified and reassuring life.
During the past seven years, more than 20,000 people have been killed in the waters of the Mediterranean, and thousands have lost their lives in the heat of the desert in North Africa”.
He pointed out that Turkey is one of the most global countries that bear the burdens of irregular refugees and migrants.
He pointed out that the Turkish state has provided refugees to Turkey with the possibilities it provided to Turkish citizens, saying: “We were unable to close our doors to those fleeing the barrel bombs, because they are human beings”.
He stressed that they made every effort to enable Syrians to be able to depend on themselves from education to health and from providing job opportunities to protecting women and children.
“We provide an opportunity for education to 685 thousand Syrian children out of a million of school age, and the rate of receiving higher education for refugees in Turkey reached 6 percent, while the proportion is 1 percent in the world”.
Erdogan gave an explanation of the health and medical services that Turkey provides to refugees, and the various projects that it implemented in order to enable refugees to depend on themselves, saying: “We’ve created the legal floor in order to grant work permission to Syrians, and encourage business owners to hire Syrians by taking ways such as reducing the fees incurred To grant work permission”.
He pointed out that they have established professional and educational languages courses for Syrian refugees in all states, and to continue their humanitarian relief activities, regularly in Syria.
Erdogan stressed that what Turkey spent on its budget from refugees exceeded 40 billion dollars according to the standards of the United Nations, and that the support it received from abroad is very limited.
The Turkish President mentioned the importance they attach to implementing the international refugee agreement that was adopted last year.
He added: “We hope that the forum will be an important step in the process of implementing the provisions of the agreement, and that keeping Syrian refugees inside Turkey cannot be considered the only solution to this problem, and other countries are charged with sharing the responsibility that Turkey held alone for 9 years”.
He stressed the need to apply formulas that keep the refugees in their lands and return those present in our country to their homeland again, pointing out that the return of the Syrians to their homeland after achieving stability and the return of life to its nature are important, as is the importance of combating terrorism.
He pointed out that he discussed this issue with many leaders of states and leaders.
“When we say, come, let us establish a safe area in northern Syria, they say it is a very good proposal, but when it comes to support, unfortunately they do not support”, he said.
Erdogan touched on statements by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan about the large number of refugees from Afghanistan to Pakistan, indicating that confronting them is another problem.
He said: “Now we are talking about the most important thing, which is the problem of the Arakan refugees in Myanmar.
It’s not possible to ignore what is happening there, in terms of hunger and misery, as they have no shelter, but all countries should support them, and we shouldn’t leave the UNHCR alone in this regard”.
He pointed out that many Western friends preferred to look at the issue of illegal immigration coming from Syria only in terms of security and interest, noting that a very wrong idea, such as laying barbed wire to protect Europe from refugees, was promoted.
He added: “We also saw measures that we will remember with shame in the future, such as puncturing refugee boats in the Mediterranean, as they sank these boats and buried these people in the waters of the Mediterranean”.
He noted the presence of politicians, headed by racist political parties, who raced to collect votes through the enmity of refugees.
He stated that under the pretext of fighting ISIS, terrorist organizations supporting the killing and ethnic cleansing in Syria were attacked and attacked the Turkish border states with Syria.
Erdogan stressed the need not to allow in Syria the same scenario and the same injustice that Palestinian refugees faced.
He pointed to the voluntary return of 371 thousand Syrians so far to the areas secured by Turkey in northern Syria, stressing that this number will rise to one million in the first stage if the project he put forward during the UN General Assembly meeting is implemented.
Erdogan described the endeavor to discipline Palestinian refugees through poverty by cutting aid to them with “humanitarian action”.
On the other hand, Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, stressed the importance of strengthening the joint efforts of their countries to combat terrorist organizations in Syria.
The Kremlin, in a statement issued after the call, which he said took place at the initiative of the Turkish side, stated that the two presidents exchanged views on the developments of events in Syria “including in the context of the Russian-Turkish agreements to establish stability in the Idlib region and north-eastern northeast of the Syrian Arab Republic”.
The Kremlin added that Putin and Erdogan stressed “the importance of increasing joint efforts aimed at combating terrorist organizations” in Syria.
The Russian and Turkish Presidents also agreed, according to the statement, to intensify contacts between their countries at various levels.
In turn, the Turkish presidency confirmed, in a statement, that Putin and Erdogan discussed, during the telephone conversations, “bilateral relations and regional issues, especially the developments of events in Libya and Syria”.
Talks are taking place between Putin and Erdogan in continuation of Russian-Turkish cooperation on the settlement of the Syrian crisis, as the two sides are closely coordinating on the situation in Idlib Governorate as well as in the northeast of the country, where the Turkish army launched on October 9 the military “Spring of Peace” operation against the Kurdish “People’s Protection Units” that Ankara considers it a terrorist.
