Turkey on Thursday pledged to construct 50,000 houses near the Turkish border in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province in an attempt to prevent new migrant waves from the war-torn country, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Some 50,000 houses will be constructed in the region by the end of this year, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said at a meeting on Idlib organized by Turkey’s disaster agency.
A total of 717,063,102 Turkish lira (about $104,610,000) were collected as part of an aid campaign for Idlib that was launched on Jan. 13, the minister said.
More than 1 million Syrians currently based in Idlib are benefiting from the campaign, he noted.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also attended the meeting via telephone and said, “Our current efforts along the border are of great importance.”
Earlier this year, Turkey launched an aid campaign to prevent nearly 1.5 million Syrian refugees from fleeing their homes in Idlib to the Turkish border.
Turkey seeks to prevent a new influx of migrants to its territories as the country already hosts more than 3.6 million refugees.