ANKARA — The Turkish government has spent more than $600 million (450 million euros) on feeding and housing Syrian refugees, the prime minister was quoted as saying Friday. "Our overall spending thus far has exceeded $600 million," the daily Hurriyet quoted Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying. Some 170,000 Syrians who have fled the violence engulfing their country are being housed at refugee camps in Turkey located near the volatile border. On his official Twitter account, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek also said the central government spent 610.5 million lira ($344 million) from its budget by Feb. 5. Local authorities have provided the rest, he added. Turkey has been one of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's fiercest critics, hosting a NATO Patriot missile defense system to protect against a spillover of violence and leading calls for international intervention to end the conflict. The United Nations said Friday that refugee numbers have spiked, with around 5,000 people fleeing each day, 2,000 more a day than last year's figures. Turkey is sheltering more than 177,000 refugees in 16 camps, although tens of thousands more Syrians have crossed into Turkey and are staying with relatives or in private accommodation, according to the country's disaster management agency. About 5,000 refugees are fleeing Syria each day, seeking safe haven in neighboring countries, the United Nations refugee agency maintains. "This is a full-on crisis," Adrian Edwards, spokesman of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told a news briefing in Geneva, Friday. "There was a huge increase in January alone, we're talking about a 25 percent increase in registered refugee numbers over a single month." Since the conflict began two years ago, more than 787,000 Syrians have registered as refugees or are awaiting processing in the region, mainly Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey, he said. Government officials complain Turkey has received only around $35 million for its humanitarian assistance from foreign donors, half of that from the United Nations. The government is tightly controlling the aid effort, channeling assistance largely through NGOs in what it says is a bid to ensure it is properly coordinated.— Agencies
