Turkey says its no country’s migrant warehouse

Turkey is no country’s migrant warehouse, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said. 

“We are not and never will be a migrant warehouse of anyone. We are determined to maintain our stance on migration and insist on equal sharing of the burden,” Soylu said during a meeting of the Immigration Board in Ankara on Thursday, state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

“Those who want to go can go wherever they want, we cannot be anyone’s immigration watchdog,” he said.

Announcing the latest figures of Syrians living in Turkey as 3.63 million, Soylu said so far 529,000 Syrian migrants have returned to their country.

Turkey is home to largest Syrian migrant population in the world, who fled home following a civil war broke out in 2011.

In May, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced a plan to facilitate the voluntary return of some 1 million of them to Syria.

Soylu blamed European countries of behaving as if they were tent states established yesterday, regarding the immigration. 

“They see it as only a border issue. But migration is not just an issue between Greece and Turkey, Iran and Turkey, Syria and Turkey or Iran and Afghanistan,” he said.