New York Post, February 7, 2016 – A new flood of Syrian refugees that some predicted could swell to 75,000 rushed to the Turkish border Saturday, fleeing advancing armies loyal to Bashar al-Assad and intense Russian airstrikes pounding the city of Aleppo and nearby towns.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said his country would continue to keep its borders open to those fleeing the fighting, but there was some question about how open the borders actually were.
“We need to keep this open-door policy for them,” Cavusoglu said after meeting with European Union foreign ministers in Amsterdam. “We have received already more than 5,000 of them. Another 50 to 55,000 of them are on the way and we cannot leave them there.”
Reports from the rainy border Saturday said Turkey was trying to find space in existing refugee camps as Assad’s forces closed in on rebels in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.
Reports said tensions among the growing numbers of refugees waiting on the border were rising by the day.
A senior government official, Gov. Suleyman Tapsiz of the border province of Kilis, said Turkey had the ability to care for the Syrians inside Syria for the time being, but had made preparations to allow them in, in the event of an “extraordinary crisis.”
Tapsiz said around 35,000 Syrians had reached the border crossing in the space of 48 hours.
“Our doors are not closed, but at the moment there is no need to host such people inside our borders,” he said.
Some 2.5 million refugees from Syria are already in Turkey.More than a million other migrants, largely Syrian, swept into the 28-nation European Union last year.