Number of Syrian refugees in Turkey hits 'psychological limit' of 100,000

[smurfy]

[url]http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443675404578058103242571138.html?mod=googlenews_wsj[/url]

[quote=WSJ]The number of Syrian refugees pouring into Turkey has now exceeded Ankara's "psychological limit" of 100,000, officials said Monday, underscoring concerns that [B]the country may not be able to cope with a flow of people that shows no sign of abating.[/B]

The Turkish Disaster Management Agency, or AFAD, confirmed in a statement Monday that there were 100,363 Syrians at 14 camps along the 565-mile border between the two countries. The refugees already there are bracing for the cold winter months with no sign of an end to the violence engulfing their homeland.

Exposed to the elements and dependent on aid, they are part of a wave of 300,000 Syrians in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, who have been displaced by the shifting front lines of Syria's conflict.

In Turkey, which has seen a dramatic acceleration in the flow of refugees as fighting has intensified in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, [B]officials conceded that the pace of construction of new camps "cannot compete with the level of violence shown to the Syrians."[/B]

[B]"We will continue our open-door policy as long as we can handle it but for the international community that shouldn't be the point," an official said.[/B]

News that the number of refugees has passed 100,000—which in the early days of Syria's 19-month-old uprising was touted as a level that Turkey would struggle to accommodate—also comes amid rising criticism from campaigners, who allege that Ankara is preventing thousands of refugees stranded on Syrian territory from entering Turkey, despite being vulnerable to attacks by the forces of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Campaign group Human Rights Watch on Sunday urged Turkey to immediately reopen border crossings where more than 15,000 Syrians have been stranded for weeks.

Turkish officials deny those claims, stressing that the Syrians waiting on the other side of the frontier have chosen not to cross because they know the Turkish camps don't have the capacity to house them. [B]Turkish officials concede, though, that the people seeking shelter on the Syrian side of the border could be at risk of attacks from Syrian government forces.[/B]

The Syrian villages and towns near the border have seen an upsurge in violence, feeding fears in Ankara that Syria's conflict could spill onto Turkish soil. Turkey scrambled two fighter jets to the border on Friday for the first time since July after a Syrian military helicopter bombed the Syrian border town of Azmarin. Residents of the nearby Turkish town of Hacipasa have heard booming explosions and the rattle of machine guns from clashes close to the frontier on a daily basis.

Turkey has been regularly firing artillery into Syria since Oct. 3, when a Syrian shell killed five civilians in the Turkish town of Akçakale.

Turkey's government is battling deepening public skepticism about the wisdom of housing refugees inside Turkish territory. Residents in the southern border province of Hatay say that the influx of overwhelmingly Sunni refugees has contributed to the collapse of the local economy and undermined the region's tradition of religious harmony.

In a September poll from Metropoll, 66% of respondents said that new Syrian refugees should be turned away. More broadly, 52% disapproved of decision to settle Syrians inside the country.[/quote]

[tau]

It is getting to the point where Turkey might have to do something, and I am hoping that something is not turning down Syrian refugees.

[ewitwins]

Ironically they might save more money and lives just going in and stopping this altogether. Think about it, if this just keeps going on the way it does, this back and forth, Turkey will just keep taking more and more until they have to start turning them down. These people will either just go straight back and start fighting themselves or start going into other countries.