The leader of Turkey’s opposition has pledged to repatriate millions of refugees to their home countries, toughening his rhetoric ahead of a hotly contested runoff election next week.
In a speech Thursday, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu claimed that his rival, longtime President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has “deliberately allowed ten million refugees into Turkey,” saying the incumbent has put “Turkish citizenship on sale to get imported votes.”
“I am announcing here: I will send all refugees back home once I am elected as president, period,” he declared, according to Turkish media.
Turkey is home to the largest number of refugees anywhere in the world, hosting an estimated four million displaced people, many from Syria and other Arab countries.
In 2016, as the Continent grappled with a growing refugee crisis, the EU signed a deal with Ankara “aimed at stopping the flow of irregular migration via Turkey to Europe.” The country has received around €10 billion in humanitarian assistance to help host those fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Africa.
Kılıçdaroğlu will face Erdoğan in a tense second round election on May 28, after neither candidate secured more than 50 percent of the vote in a first round poll last weekend. While the 74-year-old liberal democratic economist Kılıçdaroğlu had hoped to capitalize on growing anger at the government’s handling of the economy and the earthquakes that left 50,000 people dead in February, he came second, securing less than 45 percent to Erdoğan’s 49 percent. He now faces an uphill struggle to topple Erdoğan in the second round.
Kılıçdaroğlu has previously committed to returning displaced Syrians to their home country within two years.
