Turkey airdrops aid to internally displaced persons in Iraq

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Ankara aids Yazidis holed up against jihadists seeking to massacre them, dropping supplies on Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq The Turkish government airdropped humanitarian aid to thousands of members of the Yazidi community on Aug. 7, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said, adding that Turkey was the sole country conducting humanitarian operations for displaced Iraqis fleeing from ISIL violence.

“Humanitarian aid [provided by Turkey’s disaster agency, AFAD] was delivered by Iraq’s helicopters for members of the Yazidi community trapped in the mountains of the Sinjar region,” Davutoğlu told private broadcaster NTV Aug. 7.    

Davutoğlu’s statement came right after he chaired a security meeting with the participation of Land Forces Commander Gen. Hulusi Akar, Gendarmerie Forces Commander Gen. Servet Yörük and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) chief Hakan Fidan. The meeting focused on the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) advance into northern Iraq, which presents a security risk for Turkey amid growing concern about an influx of Iraqi minority groups fleeing violence into Turkey.

Having already started to supply humanitarian aid to Turkmens, the minister said: “Having the experience of Syria, what we want to do is to set up camps in the Kurdish region [of Iraq]. We could not manage that in the Syrian case,” in reference to plans to erect a camp in the Dohuk region for 20,000 Iraqi Turkmens.

The camp’s capacity could be increased to 40,000 in the future to head off a mass influx of displaced people in Iraq.

The government has ordered border governors to take necessary measures, the minister said, noting that a...

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