29 February 2016•Update: 01 March 2016
GENEVA
The ongoing civil war in Syria threatens the entire region’s peace and stability, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Lutfi Elvan said Monday.
Addressing the 31st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Elvan said: “Syria has become a broken country and the conflict in Syria continues to pose a threat to the entire region’s peace and stability.”
“Turkey itself is doing its utmost to shoulder a large part of the humanitarian catastrophe,” he said.
Turkey hosts around 2.7 million Syrian refugees, making it the country with one of the world’s largest refugee population.
About Turkey’s call for action on the refugee crisis, Elvan said: “It is obvious that taking solely security measures is not the right approach to address the challenge.”
However, Elvan noted that terrorist organizations were continuing to threaten the “order and well-being of our societies”.
“Terrorism is a shared and complex threat that requires joint as well as mutually reinforcing action on the part of the international community,” he said.
