Erdogan threatens Europe: We’ll drown you with Syrian refugees unless aid and support is provided for the “safe area”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday threatened European countries with dumping Syrian refugees.
Erdogan reiterated his threat to “open doors” for Syrian refugees to Europe unless aid and more support were provided on the “safe area”.
“Western assistance to deal with the Syrian refugee crisis in Turkey is insufficient and very slow”, Erdogan said.
“Turkey has spent 40 billion US dollars so far”.
The Turkish president also announced his readiness to hold a summit with the leaders of Russia, Germany and France to discuss the situation in Idlib and the refugee problem.
Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to open the border with Europe, because his country alone will not bear the burden of refugees.
“We’re determined to start the establishment of the safe zone east of the Euphrates in Syria in the way we want, until the last week of September”, Erdogan said in a speech at the expanded meeting of the heads of the AKP’s state branches in Ankara on Thursday.
Erdogan said Ankara would like to establish a safe zone in coordination with Washington, adding that Turkey would do its utmost if coordination between Turkey and the United States falters.
”I presented to Trump, Putin, Merkel and Obama the idea of establishing a safe area in the north of Syria, and proposed building residential compounds for Syrians in that area with small arable gardens, all of whom welcomed the idea and only welcomed it without any contribution or support”.
Erdogan explained that his country’s goal is to settle at least one million Syrian brothers in the safe area, which will be formed along 450 kilometers of the border with Syria.
In this context, Erdogan criticized the opposition’s demands to return the Syrians to their country, saying: “The opposition, which demands the return of Syrians who have fled from death, is only a mentality of the mandate, we seek to be supporters of these immigrants”.
