Turkish PM: Damascus Will ‘One Day Be Liberated’

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Damascus

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has vowed that the Syrian cities of Aleppo, Raqqa, Homs and Damascus will “one day be liberated” from the control of the Syrian government.

Hurriyet Daily News reports:

“One day, God willing, Aleppo, Raqqa, Homs and Damascus will be free,” Davutoglu said on April 11 in a speech in Turkey’s southeastern province of Şanlıurfa.

Aleppo, Homs and Damascus are all under the control of the Bashar al-Assad regime, while Raqqa is held by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Davutoglu was attending a ceremony to award Şanlıurfa with a War of Independence medal on the 96th anniversary of its liberation from enemy invasion.

He also said that the reason why today there are “blood and tears” in Aleppo, Raqqa, Hasakeh, Deir Ezzor and Homs, which where “left outside of the homeland,” was because they could not live their “independence love 100 years ago.”

“Our cities were separated. Tel Abyad was separated from Akçakale, Suruç from Kobane, and Ras al-Ayn from Ceylanpınar. But this city of independence [Şanlıurfa] has never broken its ties,” said Davutoglu, noting that Şanlıurfa is currently hosting 520,000 Syrian refugees.

Turkey hosts around 2.7 million Syrian refugees, who have fled their homes due to the Syrian civil war that has entered its sixth year. The total number of migrants in the country stands at 3 million people.

While around 250,000 of the migrants in Turkey are residing in refugee camps, the rest live outside of camps.

Damascus

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