After the Capacity for Hosting Syrian Refugees is Met, Then What?

Turkey - the largest host of Syrian refugees, announced earlier today that it was now hosting 3-million refugees up from 2.5 million, hereby signifying the country has reached the end of its "capacity to absorb" more refugees, the Associated Press(AP) has reported.

However, according to Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, the country will continue to take in Syrians despite reaching capacity and obviously under international pressure to open its borders to tens of thousands more refugees fleeing Russian bombs and an advance by the Bashar al Assad's regime forces, in Aleppo, Syria.

The deputy prime minister declared: "Turkey has reached the end of its capacity to absorb (refugees)...But in the end, these people have nowhere else to go. Either they will die beneath the bombings and Turkey will...watch the massacre like the rest of the world, or we will open or borders."

Turkey confirmed that 15,000 refugees were allowed into the country in the past few days and that some 30,000 were being cared for on the other side of the border. Deputy Prime Minister Kurtulmus admitted: "At the moment we are admitting some, and are trying to keep others (in Syria) by providing them with every kind of humanitarian support...We are not in a position to tell them not to come. If we do, we would be abandoning them to their deaths." 

Yet, according to Turkey, "in the worst case scenario", as many as 1-million more refugees could flee Aleppo and the surrounding areas under Russian bombardment.

Then, what will happen when Turkey's full capacity to house refugees has popped? Where will the Syrians go? Will they be left to die? How many more billions of dollars would third- party governments and organizations have to spend to ameliorate the deadly wrath of Bashar al Assad and Vladimir Putin? Humanitarian persecution must not be perpetual. There must be a limit to the refugee shame in Syria.