Meeting with the foreign ministers of countries bordering Syria on Sept. 4 in Geneva, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated, “The number of Syrians in Turkey was around 50,000 last year, [and now that] number has reached 500,000 this year.”
The fact is, though, that there were at the least more than 130,000 Syrians living in the makeshift camps on the border even a year ago, and the Turkish government has been denying full access to these border camps to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which prevented the international community to fully come on board in helping the Turkish government in sharing the burden of taking care of these people. Davutoglu complained that the international community’s support has remained at minimum.
