MOSCOW, April 17 (RIA Novosti) - Turkey has already spent $700 million helping Syrian refugees, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday, calling on international organizations to stop turning a blind eye to Syria’s problems.
Speaking to reporters after a Russian-Turkish Joint Strategic Planning Group in Istanbul, the minister said about 200,000 Syrians were living in refugee camps in Turkey.
“The number of refugees in camps in Turkey exceeds 200,000. In other countries there are over 100,000 more. We have already allocated $700 million in aid to the refugees,” the minister said.
About 70,000 people have died in Syria since the start of the uprising against President Assad in March 2011, according to UN estimates.
The UN Refugee Agency estimates the number of persons displaced by the conflict at 1.3 million people, with almost 1.1 million officially registered and some 250,000 awaiting registration.
According to the agency, Jordan and Lebanon house the largest number of Syrian refugees with more than 400,000 registered in each country. Turkey is the third-largest recipient with almost 300,000 refugees.
