Number of Syrian refugees in Turkey exceeds one million

ANKARA

A Syrian refugee family waits for a ferry in Istanbul's Üsküdar docks. The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has reached 1.05 million, Deputy PM Atalay said.

The number of Syrians taking refuge in Turkey has reached 1.05 million with no peaceful end in sight to the civil war-torn country, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay said on June 19.

Atalay said a total of 22 camps in Turkey were hosting 218,632 refugees, with some camps hosting as many as 35,000-40,000 individuals.

The Turkish government provides free education to the children of Syrian refuges, as well as medical treatment free of change.

In addition to camps for Iraqi citizens fleeing the violence in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Turkey would also be setting up a refugee camp only for Turkmens, Atalay also stated.

Around 600,000-700,000 people have fled Mosul to the nearby Dohuk region of northern Iraq, he said, adding that Turkey had been sending humanitarian aid to those people.

Turkmens who fled the city of Telafer are mostly taking shelter in Iraq’s Sincar region, where Turkey is also sending humanitarian assistance for 20,000 people, Atalay said, adding that Turkey was also working to set up a camp solely for Turkmens.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s statistics agency said an increased number of people had been granted asylum across the 28-nation bloc last year, mostly due to the high influx of refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

Eurostat said the number of accepted asylum seekers rose by 17 percent to 135,700 in 2013 from 116,200 a year earlier, meaning that about one in three applications was accepted out of a total of 462,000.

Some 36,000 Syrians had been granted asylum, a quarter of the total, followed by about 16,000 Afghans and 9,700 Somalis. Sweden, with 9.6 million inhabitants, was the most generous country in accepting asylum seekers, granting protection to 26,400 people, followed by Germany, the EU’s most populous nation, which accepted 26,100 people. France took in 16,200, and Italy 14,500.