Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the Turkish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), on Tuesday called on country’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to hold a referendum on the presidential initiative to grant citizenship to Syrian refugees, Sputnik reported.
“They are using Syrians as a tool of domestic politics. First of all, the president has no such jurisdiction to decide on this by himself. But if he trusts himself so much, then OK let’s take it to referendum,” Demirtas said, as quoted by the Dogan news agency.
Demirtas said he believed that the plans to provide the Syrians, who will become Turkish citizens, with homes were not based on any existing Turkish law.
“He [Erdogan] is saying ‘there are lawyers and doctors among them.’ So he is personally going to select which migrants to take too,” Demirtas stressed.
Bne Intelli News reported that Turkey’s opposition called on the ruling party to put a controversial government plan to grant citizenship to nearly 3mn Syrian refugees to a referendum.
