Turkey alone hosts 15 pct of refugees in world: MP

By Mehmet Sah Yilmaz

SEOUL (AA) - Turkey alone hosts around 15 percent of the refugees in the world, according to a lawmaker of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party on Thursday.

Addressing the 15th International Parliamentary General Meeting held in Seoul, Abdullah Guler, the head of parliament’s Turkey-South Korea parliamentary friendship group said Turkey hosts around 3.5 million Syrian refugees.

In addition to Syrians, Turkey hosts about 1 million people from different nations, Guler added.

The number of migrants exceeded 250 million worldwide, while the number of refugees climbed to over 25 million, he said.

Guler also noted that Turkey provides free education and health services to Syrians under its temporary protection and has so far spent more than $33 billion of expenditures for the Syrians in Turkey.

Syria has only just begun to emerge from a devastating civil war that began in 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on demonstrators with unexpected ferocity.