Syria lambasts Erdogan plan to return million refugees

Syrian authorities rejected Turkey’s plan to return one million Syrian refugees to a “safe zone” along the border on Friday, according to state media.

In early May, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that Ankara hoped to encourage one million Syrian refugees to return home by providing housing and local infrastructure.

More than 3.6 million Syrian refugees have fled to Turkey since a civil war erupted in Turkey’s southern neighbor in 2011.

Erdogan’s “cheap statements” reveal his regime’s “aggressive games against Syria and the unity of its land and people,” the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on the official news agency SANA.

Erdogan is facing rising public anger over the refugees’ presence and is wary of the issue dominating elections next year.

He said around 500,000 Syrians have returned to “safe zones” on the Turkey-Syria border since 2016.

These are controlled by Ankara-backed groups. The areas are designed to keep Syrians displaced by war from crossing into Turkish territory and to allow it to send back others who already did.

“The government of the Syrian Arab Republic absolutely rejects such games,” the ministry said, calling on countries not to finance the Turkish projects and to stop supporting Ankara.

“The main objective is colonialism… The so-called safe zone is in fact ethnic cleansing,” the ministry said.

Ankara has carried out military strikes on a Kurdish-administered zone in northeastern Syria where it believes terrorists are based on a regular basis.

Syria’s conflict has killed nearly 500,000 people since it began in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful protests.