284,000 Syrian children born in Turkey since start of war: Interior Minister Soylu

TRABZON

Some 284,777 children of Syrian origin have been born in Turkey since the Syrian crisis triggered a mass migration into the country in 2011, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said on Feb. 18.

“Up until today, the number of children who have arrived in Turkey as a result of the Syrian war is 1.31 million. That means this sacred nation has ignored black propaganda and has saved all these children. Some 284,777 children have been born in these lands,” Soylu said at a fund-raising event in the Black Sea province of Trabzon for the construction of an orphanage in Somalia.

“There is another striking number: Due to the civil war in Syria, 10,000 children [in Turkey] have lost all of the relatives they had been dependent on,” he added, as reported by Doğan News Agency.

Nearly 700,000 Syrian students

Soylu said the number of students of Syrian nationality at Turkish universities was 20,429, while the number of Syrian students attending schools in Turkey was 669,780.

“The reason I have expressed these numbers is to show the great accomplishment of this sacred nation. Therefore, building an orphanage in Somalia also suits us,” he said.

Meanwhile, running a campaign to provide education to the estimated 1.5 million Syrian children in Turkey, UNICEF has announced on its website that nearly 350,000 Syrian children in Turkey are devoid of enrolling in an educational program.

Soylu also stated that there are 400,000 orphans worldwide who are the children of refugees and asylum-seekers, whose numbers alone are over 12 million. There are also 23 million internally displaced children around the world, he noted.

The orphanage in Somalia will reportedly cost a total of 550,000 Turkish Liras to build and will partly be funded by private sector businesses.