Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called on Tuesday for the resettlement of one million Syrian refugees in their homeland in "a very short period of time" and accused world powers of moving more quickly to protect Syria's oil fields than its children.
Erdogan, whose country hosts 3.7 million Syrian refugees, the largest refugee population worldwide, said more than 600,000 should voluntarily join around 371,000 already in a "peace zone" in northern Syria from which Turkey drove Kurdish militia.
"We need to find a formula that will allow the refugees to remain in their homelands and the ones who have already traveled to Turkey to be peacefully returned and resettled in their homelands," he said.