Turkey has been firm that it is unwilling to risk a repeat of 1991, when Iraq’s Gulf War sent a flood of Iraqi Kurd refugees into Turkey. “Turkey’s lesson from the early 1990s is that if you let a large number of refugees come in, they end up being your problem only,” Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), told The Christian Science Monitor.
Turkey is close to reaching its self-prescribed threshold of 100,000 refugees with no sign of the numbers abating. It has been forced to hold thousands of people just over the border on the Syrian side, where they are receiving food, water, and some medical attention. The corridor has become an unofficial safe zone.
Why not continue with that?
The Monitor reports that an internationally recognized and implemented safe zone would be a stronger deterrent to any regime attempts to attack displaced civilians and would also provide greater reassurance to stranded Syrians that they are safe in Syria and do not need to cross over into Turkey or other neighboring countries.