Turkey alone 'has accepted two million refugees'

LISBON, Portugal

Turkey alone has accepted almost two million refugees from Iraq and Syria but the international community should do more to fix the crisis in the region.

This was the claim made by speaker of the Turkish parliament, Cemil Cicek, in Portugal at a Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean meeting on Monday.

In his speech Cicek said: “Turkey alone has accepted around 2 million refugees (Syria, 1.7 million and Iraq, 200,000), meanwhile the EU is negotiating to accept just 130,000 refugees.”

“Turkey has spent $5.6 billion while the international community has contributed just $260 million, unfortunately. I will, like you, notice the gap,” Cicek added.

Cicek said the refugee problem starts with human trafficking, which is linked to terror organizations.

“In 2014, we got 14,000 illegal immigrants and we caught over 106 human traffickers,” Cicek said, adding: "The situation is extremely serious and we cannot afford to ignore this problem.”

"People from more than 90 countries are trying to join the Daesh terror group. We barred 12,500 people from passing through Turkey and 1,200 people were deported from our borders.”

“If this conflict continues, in the future we may have two, three or five million refugees in Turkey. We cannot turn our back on this,” he told delegates.