Erdogan says 3m refugees could be returned from Turkey to Syria ‘safe zone’

Up to three million Syrian refugees could be returned to a “safe zone” that Turkey is seeking to establish in northern Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday.

Turkey is home to more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Working with the US, Turkish forces are seeking to clear a swathe of northern Syria, in part to push Kurdish rebels away from its border. For Ankara, a key priority is curbing the influence of Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it sees as an off-shoot of the Kurdish separatists in its own territory.

If successful, “we will be able to house, depending on the depth of the safe zone, between two and three million Syrian refugees that are currently in Turkey and Europe,” Erdogan said in a televised speech.

Earlier this week, Erdogan said that he envisions the “peace corridor” as stretching right across northern Syria all the way to Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa, AFP reported.