The head of a parliamentary commission, who on Tuesday paid a visit to the Apaydın refugee camp on the Turkish borderline which houses Syrian armed forces defectors and soldiers, precluded allegements that the camp is being practiced as a site supplying military training to Syrian defectors, telling it’s physically improper to be used for such a aim.
Apaydın camp, placed in the southern province of Hatay, came to the public’s attention when 2 Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputies who wanted to visit the camp in late August were refused entry into the camp, which houses 33 defected Syrian generals and hundreds of high-ranking Syrian army officers and their families.
The CHP has repeatedly demanded the government why its deputies have been denied entry into the camp. CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has arrogated that Turkey is training Syrian military defectors and soldiers in the camp, which has been blocked off to the media.
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The government told it keeps the camp closed to the outside world due to security reasons. It told the CHP’s decision to visit the Apaydın camp was politically-motivated as it would like to visit the closed camp particularly, and not any of the other Syrian refugee camps.
Members of Parliament’s Human Rights Investigation Commission, including commission head Ayhan Sefer Üstün, Justice and Development Party (AK Party) deputies Cemal Yılmaz Demir and Kerim Özkul and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) deputy Atilla Kaya, went to analyse the camp on Tuesday. The commission’s members from the CHP and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) didn’t join the visit.
“There’s not even a physical ground in the camp that may add any legitimacy to the allegements. The allegements are groundless. These people who have taken protection in our country are attempting to survive. Esteemed Kılıçdaroğlu had better properly analyse the relevant parts of the constitution. There is nothing in this camp that is different from other refugee camps. There’s not even an appropriate place for children to play football. How may armed training be proposed in such a place? I’m just astonished over such allegations,”
CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu has also arrogated that the government is charging a constitutional law-breaking because foreign troops may only be based in Turkey after parliamentary approving of such a resolution.
Üstün took note that there are around 2,700 people living in the Apaydın camp and most of them are women and babies, while only 300 of them are either Syrian soldiers or policemen.
Remarking the physical circumstances of the camp, he told: “Even if children blow up a pop gun, it may be easily heard from the road and fields near the camp. The one thing that those who arrogate that the camp is being applied as an area for military training ignore is the physical circumstances of the camp. How may armed training be offered there?”
Üstün explained that forty decares of the campsite, established on an area of nearly 130 decares, are taken up by administrative buildings while the rest is barely sufficient to use as accommodation for refugees.