ANKARA
Turkey has invested about $19 million in projects led by the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency, or TIKA, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday.
Speaking at the opening ceremony for the TIKA program "Same Signature in Different Geographies," Erdogan said that projects had been completed in six different countries.
The opening of a bread factory in Kyrgyzstan, the construction of theTurkish martyrs memorial in Myanmar, the establishment of the Recep Tayyip Erdogan hospital in Pakistan, the building of the Tonyukuk highway in Mongolia and the Mehmet Akif Ersoy mosque in Kosovo and the restoration of the Nablus Resadiye girls school in Palestine were announced by Erdogan at the ceremony with the participation of presidents and ministers of the countries involved via live broadcast.
"In the last 12 years, Turkey has delivered aid to 140 countries, in areas ranging from education to health," said Erdogan.
The president said Turkey will continue with its projects.
Erdogan added the amount of humanitarian aid that Turkey has provided amounted to $4.5 billion in 2014.
Erdogan said: "Turkey has spent $5.6 billion supporting Syrian refugees to date."
The Syrian crisis has created the worst global refugee crisis in decades, putting pressure on Western countries to open their borders and help refugees.
The UN High Commission for Refugees has registered 2.2 million refugees in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, while Turkey has registered 1.7 million Syrians in the country.
"Our country's capabilities are largely sufficient to meet the needs of our brothers," Erdogan said.
"We are working to make Turkey into a country that takes in its brothers, rather than closing its doors," he added.
The projects
- Bishkek Bread Factory, which was located in a 3,000 square meter closed area, has the capacity to produce 3,000 loaves of bread per hour and 30,000 loaves of bread in a day.
- Turkish martyrs memorial in Myanmar includes a total of 222 martyrs of military and civil servants, who died during the First World War.
- Recep Tayyip Erdogan hospital in Pakistan has a capacity of 90 beds. The modern hospital has 32 doctors and 78 nurses and it consists of two operating rooms, one morgue and one laundry.
- The 11 kilometers of Tonyukuk highway in Mongolia was completed to reach the Orkhon Inscriptions, the first written Turkish texts known in history, with the expressway.
- Turkish poet Mehmet Akif Ersoy's mosque, which was established in 1861, was ruined and burned during the war in 1999. TIKA started restoring the mosque in 2014.
- The Nablus Resadiye girls school in Palestine was established in 1911. TIKA started restoration in 2014. The school has a 3,200 square meter area of usage, 12 classrooms, one playground, two computer labs and one kitchen. The school teaches 311 girls with 21 teachers and four administrative staff.
