450,000 extra foreign students in Turkey last year

ANKARA

The number of foreign students in Turkey nearly tripled between 2015 and last year, the migration authority said Thursday.

Nearly 670,000 students were being educated in universities, schools and refugee center classrooms in 2016, compared to just over 223,000 the year earlier.

The majority last year -- 293,039 -- were taught in refugee camps and 232,714 were pupils at state schools.

There were 103,727 foreign university students in Turkey in 2016, around 13,000 more than the previous year.

The largest national group of university students was from Azerbaijan (15,036), followed by Syria (14,765) and Turkmenistan (10,642).

Foreign state school pupils were overwhelmingly from Syria -- 166,482 last year compared to 22,348 in 2015 -- but another 23,971 Iraqi pupils and 12,782 Afghans also had places in Turkish schools.

In temporary refugee camps around the country, mostly Syrian children were taught in their own language in addition to weekly 15-hour Turkish lessons.

Almost 79,000 attended camp schools in 2015, a figure that rocketed last year.

Reporting by Orhan Onur Gemici; Writing by Sibel Ugurlu