Turkey: Reaching our limits, but we’ll keep taking in refugees

Turkey has reached the end of its “capacity to absorb” refugees but will continue to take them in, the deputy premier says, as his country faces mounting pressure to open its border to tens of thousands of Syrians who have fled a government onslaught.

Ankara says up to 35,000 Syrians have massed along the border, which remains closed for a third day. The governor of the Turkish border province of Kilis said yesterday that Turkey would provide aid to the displaced within Syria, but would only open the gates in the event of an “extraordinary crisis.”

Deputy PM Numan Kurtulmus tells CNN-Turk that Turkey is now hosting a total of 3 million refugees, including 2.5 million Syrians.

“Turkey has reached the end of its capacity to absorb [refugees],” Kurtulmus says. “But in the end, these people have nowhere else to go. Either they will die beneath the bombings and Turkey will … watch the massacre like the rest of the world, or we will open our borders.”

Kurtulmus says Turkey has admitted some 15,000 refugees from Syria in the past few days, without elaborating. He puts the number of refugees being cared for on the other side of the border at 30,000.

— AP