Turkey: Reaching Limits, But Will Keep Taking in Refugees

“The next days will tell the story of whether people are serious or people are not serious”.

Internally displaced Syrians queue to receive blankets near the Bab al-Salam crossing, across from Turkey’s Kilis province, on the outskirts of the northern border town of Azaz, Syria February 6, 2016.

“As supply lines to East Aleppo are almost cut, MSF is anxious about an impending food, water and fuel crisis in the coming weeks”, said Zancada.

But the fighting is making access to populations in need “increasingly difficult”, a United Nations official said.

Also on Sunday, Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said although the country has reached the end of its capacity to absorb refugees, it would go on letting Syrians in.

In November, the European Union clinched a deal with Turkey, offering it €3bn (£2.3bn; $3.3bn) to care for Syrian refugees on Turkish soil.

On Saturday, Turkey kept its border crossing at Oncupinar closed, even as the number of Syrians at the gateway swelled in the past 48 hours.

Suleyman Tapsiz, governor of the border province of Kilis, said Turkey would send aid, but would only let the Syrians cross into the country in the event of an “extraordinary crisis”.

The 5-year-old civil war in Syria showed no sign of ending any soon after President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, backed by Russian air strikes, closed in on the rebel stronghold of Aleppo, forcing thousands to flee.

Those living in parts of the city held by the rebels since 2012 fear they could be the next victims of siege tactics used across Syria by all sides in the war, which have caused widespread malnourishment and starvation.

Erdogan again dismissed Russia’s claims that Turkey was actively preparing to invade Syria, saying Moscow itself was an “invader”.

Several Iranian troops, including high-ranking officers, have been killed in Syria.

Syria’s state news agency SANA and an opposition monitoring group say pro-government troops have taken another northern community as part of a weeklong offensive aimed at encircling the country’s largest city, Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Kurdish officials said the main Kurdish militia in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin, north of Aleppo, was taking in some of those stuck on the border. The UN Security Council was due to meet later Friday to discuss the faltering peace process, as North Atlantic Treaty Organisation head Jens Stoltenberg warned Russian air strikes were “undermining the efforts to find a political solution”. This week alone, Russian warplanes hit close to 900 targets across Syria, including near Aleppo.

“They talk big”, Jafari said.

Top EU officials on Saturday reminded Turkey of its global obligations to keep its frontiers open to refugees as thousands fleeing a new government offensive in Syria remained camped out along its southern border.

“I look at these images of people standing at the Turkish border and I just wanted to underline the message people who are in humanitarian need should be allowed in”, he said.

“If they reached our door and have no other choice, if necessary, we have to and will let our brothers in”, he said. Thousands of Syrians have rushed toward the Turkish border, fleeing fier…

Trapped between the advancing armies loyal to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and the sealed Turkish border are 35,000 people trying to escape the onslaught on the city of Aleppo.

The Syrian uprising began in March 2011 with mostly peaceful protests but escalated into a full-blown civil war after a harsh government crackdown.