EU announces extra 1 billion euros in refugee funding for Turkiye

ANKARA: The EU is to give Turkiye an extra one billion euros ($1.05 billion) in funding to care for the Syrian refugees it is hosting, European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen said Tuesday.

“An additional one billion euros for 2024 is on its way,” she said at a joint news conference in Ankara with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The funds would support the healthcare and education needs of refugees in Turkiye and “contribute to migration and border management, including voluntary returns of Syrian refugees”, she said.

Turkiye is hosting nearly three million refugees who fled across the border in search of safety after the civil war began in 2011.

Erdogan hopes for ‘end to 13 years of instability’ in Syria

Ankara is hoping the shift in power in Damascus will allow many of them to return home.

“As things evolve on the ground, we can adapt this one billion to the new needs that might occur in Syria,” she said.

In recent years, the refugee question has generated increasing domestic tension in Turkiye as the country lives through an enduring economic crisis, which has hurt Erdogan politically.

Within days of Assad’s fall, Turkiye quickly moved to significantly expand its border crossing capacities to allow them to return.

Since 2012, the European Union has provided nearly 10 billion euros in funding to Turkiye to support it with migration.

In 2016, Ankara and Brussels inked a controversial deal under which the EU agreed to offer money in exchange for Turkiye taking back any irregular migrants reaching Europe.