Turkey vowed Sunday to complete construction of 100,000 houses in war-torn Syria, as
Ankara pushes to settle Syrian refugees who fled more than a decade of fighting
ahead of elections.
اضافة اعلان
Turkish Interior
Minister
Suleyman Soylu, speaking Sunday on a visit to open 600 basic homes in
Syria’s rebel-held Idlib region, said 75,000 houses had been constructed in the
past two years.
“We will be
completing 100,000 ... houses by the end of the year,” Soylu said, at the
ceremony in the newly built settlement made up of rows of brick bungalows at
Mashhad Ruhin, which lies close to the Turkish border.
Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said in recent months he wanted to encourage 1 million
of the country’s 3.7 million Syrian refugees to return home by building them
housing and providing basic infrastructure.
Ahead of Turkey’s
presidential elections next year, the presence of refugees has become a thorny
political issue, especially with
Ankara mired in an economic crisis.
Syria’s civil began
in 2011 with the regime’s brutal repression of mostly peaceful protesters, and
millions have been forced to flee, now displaced internally and abroad.
Ankara and militia
forces it supports have seized swathes of territory along the Syrian border
during several military operations since 2016.
Turkey says it
wants to create a “safe zone” along its border to stop Syrians displaced by war
from crossing, and to send back some of the millions who already have.
Erdogan said more
than half a million Syrians who had fled to Turkey have returned home to these
safe zones.
More than 500
families now live in the newly opened settlement at Mashhar Ruhin, with 100
more due to arrive in coming days, the latest in series of Ankara-sponsored
housing projects.
Hadiya Al-Taha, 70,
used to live in a tent with her daughter after fleeing fighting in southern
Idlib four years ago.
“Residential blocks
are better than tents, you can’t even compare the two,” she said, as she moved
her meagre possessions of mattresses, blankets and some household utensils to
the house.
But she still
misses her original home and farm.
“Our village house
was the best,” she said.
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