How did Ankara's spending on Syrian refugees jump to $25 billion?
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently claimed Turkey spent $25 billion on Syrian refugees, although he had cited $10 billion in February and even the number of refugees did not change.
In his recent address to the UN General Assembly's annual meeting, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey had spent $25 billion for Syrian refugees. This number caught everyone off guard, because until now Turks were told that their country had spent $10 billion for Syrian refugees.
On July 9, 2015, Erdogan said that Turkey had spent $6 billion for Syrian refugees between 2011 and June 2015. On Oct. 5, 2015, however, the Turkish president said the sum was actually $7.5 billion. Head of Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency Fuat Oktay had spoken of $10 billion as of February 2016.
The question is why expenditures rose from $10 billion at the end of February 2016 to $25 billion six months later.
Six months ago there were 2.7 million Syrians in Turkey, a figure that the president confirmed in his United Nations address. If the number of refugees did not increase, why did the expenditures grow?
