“Ankara has provided assistance to Iraq to support displaced families amounting to $1 million” and “prevented” the arrival of nearly 10,000 suspects to the region, the Anadolu Agency reported Turkish ambassador in Iraq Faruk Kaymakcı saying yesterday.
During the distribution of aid to displaced Iraqis in Baghdad Kaymakcı pointed out that “Turkey removed many suspects from its territories”, without specifying the suspects’ identities.
The Turkish ambassador stressed that his country will stand with Iraq in its war against the Islamic State (ISIS) and help it return the displaced people to their areas and will continue efforts on its border with Syria and Iraq to support the displaced.
“Turkey sent more than 750 trucks of aid to Iraq to support displaced families since June last year through the province of Dohuk,” he said, stressing that “the Turkish government is currently granting licenses to planes carrying relief aid for Iraq to travel through its airspace.”
On Tuesday, the Turkish Red Crescent Society donated 1,000 caravans to accommodate displaced families in some areas in Iraq.
The Vice President of the Turkish Red Crescent Mintaz Şimşek who is visiting Iraq said: “The Turkish Red Crescent Society offers continuing aid to some 37,000 displaced Iraqis residing in camps in Turkey who were displaced after the events in June when Islamic State militants swept wide areas in the north of the country.”
Şimşek told the Anadolu Agency: “There are 200,000 Iraqi refugees living in various Turkish cities, mostly in Istanbul, and we are working to provide relief assistance to them,” pointing out that last month “the society distributed 2,000 food baskets for Iraqis living outside refugee camps”.
The Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration announced in the latest statistics released last week that the numbers of displaced people in the country reached 510,000 families or as many as 2.5 million displaced people currently living in Kurdistan.