Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week is the fifth anniversary of the Syrian conflict—the worst refugee and humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. Half the Syrian pre-war population is now displaced and 4½ million Syrian refugees are in urgent need of resettlement and a place to call home.

While talks are underway to provide greater financial assistance to Turkey, the fact remains that more than 2.7 million Syrian refugees have taken refuge so far in Turkey since the commencement of this conflict and many more are now using Turkey as a transit point to Europe. The EU agreement aims to discourage Syrian refugees from travelling to Europe through Turkey. The financial assistance to Turkey is to aid its efforts in handling the influx of refugees. However, this package is yet to be finalised. While Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan are making a disproportionate effort in terms of catering for refugees, they simply lack the financial resources necessary to cater for the dimensions of this humanitarian crisis. So far Turkey has already met around $8 billion in the cost of setting up suitable refugee camps, providing educational opportunity for approximately 700,000 Syrian schoolchildren as well as free health services to all refugees.

During my visit to Nizip refugee camp in Gaziantep last year with the member for Berowra, I saw firsthand the despair and desperation. You simply cannot come away from that experience unaffected. However, the visit also gave me the opportunity to see the compassionate and commendable work undertaken by the Turkish government in managing these camps, particularly in establishing schools and in providing for the educational needs of Syrian children. I saw bilingual teachers teaching children in accordance with the national school curriculum in an effort to provide these kids with a future.

Amongst all of the goodwill, regrettably terrorist attacks have now dramatically added to the pressure that Turkey is labouring under. It has no doubt made the administration of humanitarian relief far more difficult. Last week, attacks at a bus stop in the Turkish capital of Ankara killed 37 innocent people and injured 127 others. Reports suggest the attack was carried out by the PKK, a proscribed terrorist organisation. Less than a month ago, the Turkish people were rocked when a car bomb exploded in central Ankara, killing 29 people and wounding another 60. This time it was the Kurdish Freedom Hawks that claimed responsibility. Last year, an ISIS suicide bomber detonated his package of death near the Blue Mosque in Istanbul killing 10 tourists.

Together with Philip Ruddock, I recall very well of being in the same place last year. It is a very popular and crowded tourist destination, but also, for us, we saw it was a place of worship for people of the Islamic faith. This tragedy in many respects personalised, for me, the plight of what is now facing Turkey and its people, who are already shouldering much of the humanitarian responsibility in terms of the humanitarian crisis in Syria.

Over the past 1½ years Turkey has suffered a range of terrorist attacks involving both ISIS and militant separatist organisations. I find it incomprehensible that, with all that occurring, at the moment we have in excess of 90 Australians who have been found to flee Australia to join the militant group, ISIS. Nevertheless, the likelihood of refugees returning to be resettled in Syria, quite frankly, seems a distant hope. There appears no foreseeable end to the Assad regime or to the ongoing atrocities of ISIS.

Turkey is now faced with the complex challenge of providing settlement for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees if other countries do not lend greater assistance. This underlines the importance of the key players in coming to an agreement to assist the disproportionate load which is being carried by the neighbouring countries of Syria.

I offer my condolences to the people of Turkey for the recent atrocities they have suffered. I offer our great thanks for the enormous contribution that they have made. (Time expired)