ISTANBUL
Turkish NGOs and state institutions that joined the aid campaign "Winter has arrived...Bread and Blanket for Syrians", an international aid effort carried out in 28 countries, have united around the cause of creating a "safety corridor" to enable the international community to make humanitarian intervention in Syria.
Humanitarian Aid Platform, comprising organizations that strive for helping Syrian people, is a felicitous result of a horrible two-year long internal conflict, said Ali Kurt, Secretary General of the Union of NGOs of the Islamic World (UNIW).
"Winter has passed but the problems have yet to be resolved. The war rages on at full pelt," Kurt said. "We are faced with a regime that massacres its own people. It is impossible to accept the indifference of the international community in the face of this cruelty."
Kurt said they presumed establishing a corridor that is closed to flights and insulated from armed conflict.
"We will do our very best in the way of non-governmental efforts to help open a safety corridor, a corridor of mercy operating above the international decision making mechanisms, which would allow for humanitarian intervention into Syria by the international community," Kurt said. "We plan to pursue this goal in a three-legged push involving the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU) and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC)."
In the "Winter has arrived...Bread and Blanket for Syrians" campaign, the organizers amassed 200 million dollars for Syria, which adds up to a billion dollars in aid by Turkey combined with the country's expenses in hosting in camps close to 200,000 Syrian shelter-seekers.
