Aleppo, Damascus will ‘one day be liberated,’ vows Turkish PM Davutoğlu

ŞANLIURFA

AA photo

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has again said he believes that cities in Syria - Aleppo, Raqqa, Homs and Damascus – will “one day be liberated.” 

“One day, God willing, Aleppo, Raqqa, Homs and Damascus will be free,” Davutoğlu said on April 11 in a speech in Turkey’s southeastern province of Şanlıurfa. 

Aleppo, Homs and Damascus are all under the control of the Bashar al-Assad regime, while Raqqa is held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Davutoğlu was attending a ceremony to award Şanlıurfa with a War of Independence medal on the 96th anniversary of its liberation from enemy invasion. 

He also said that the reason why today there are “blood and tears” in Aleppo, Raqqa, Hasakeh, Deir Ezzor and Homs, which where “left outside of the homeland,” was because they could not live their “independence love 100 years ago.” 

“Our cities were separated. Tel Abyad was separated from Akçakale, Suruç from Kobane, and Ras al-Ayn from Ceylanpınar. But this city of independence [Şanlıurfa] has never broken its ties,” said Davutoğlu, noting that Şanlıurfa is currently hosting 520,000 Syrian refugees. 

Turkey hosts around 2.7 million Syrian refugees, who have fled their homes due to the Syrian civil war that has entered its sixth year. The total number of migrants in the country stands at 3 million people. 

While around 250,000 of the migrants in Turkey are residing in refugee camps, the rest live outside of camps.