ISTANBUL
Turkey has called on the international community to help it cope with the flood of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Istanbul on Monday, Interior Minister Efkan Ala said: "Within the last week more than 150,000 mainly Kurdish refugees took shelter in Turkey. This means a city.
“International organizations did not help properly. So we spent $4 billion, the UN has spent $160 million on aid [in Syria] and other countries in total spent $244 million on aid. This is nothing."
Ala criticized Western policy in the Middle East claiming they bear responsibility for the emergence of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant that “threaten humanity and the West.”
Turkey has taken in more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees since the war began in 2011. Turkey has spent more than $3.5 billion on helping Syrians since civil war broke out in 2011.
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