ISTANBUL, Turkey — A group of Syrian refugees in
Turkey is planning
to form a caravan to reach the EU, organizers said Saturday.
اضافة اعلان
Plans are being
drawn up online via a Telegram channel, set up six days ago and followed by
almost 70,000 people. Organisers are calling on people to bring sleeping bags,
tents, life jackets, water, canned food, and first aid kits.
“We will announce
it when it’s time to go,” one organizer, a 46-year-old refugee who wished to
remain anonymous, told AFP.
Some of the
organizers already lived in the EU, he added.
Organizers say the
caravan will be split into groups of up to 50 people, each led by a supervisor.
“We have been in
Turkey for 10 years,” read one message posted on the channel by an
administrator. “We are protected ... but Western countries must share the
burden.”
There are 3.7
million
Syrian refugees officially living in Turkey.
Syria’s civil war,
which began with a brutal crackdown of anti-government protests in 2011, has
killed nearly half a million people and forced around half of the country’s
pre-war population from their homes.
Many Syrian
refugees in Turkey fear being sent back, especially after a recent shift in
Turkey’s stance towards Damascus.
Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said he is preparing to send back one million Syrian
refugees on a voluntary basis.
In February and
March 2020, tens of thousands of migrants approached the land border between
Turkey and Greece, after Erdogan threatened to keep the borders with Europe
open.
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