The international community is experiencing the most massive wave of migration since World War II, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday.
"The total number of migrants in the world has now reached 275 million, some 85 million have left their homes and the number of refugees is close to 30 million," Erdogan said in a video address to the inter-parliamentary conference on migration and refugees that opened in Istanbul. He added that about 5 million more people who were forced to leave their homes during the Ukrainian crisis should be added to this figure. "No one can avoid responsibility in the days when we are experiencing the most massive movement of people since World War II," the Turkish president said.
According to Erdogan, Turkey has hosted more refugees than any other country for the past seven years. "Just as we welcomed our brothers, hundreds of thousands of people from Iraq during the first Gulf War, we received 3.6 million migrants from Syria fleeing the war in their homeland on our lands. We have not turned anyone away from our doors based on ethnicity, religion, culture or nationality," Erdogan said.
The Turkish president called on the international community to be courageous in confronting the problems that underlie migration.
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Photo: official website of the President of the Russian Federation
Based on materials from TASS