MOSCOW (Sputnik) — 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.
"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.
It was impossible to solve the problem of Syrian refugees by only fueling nationalism and the "racist, chauvinistic wave" against the Syrians, he noted.
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.
On July 2, Erdogan said that the Interior Ministry was preparing a regulation that would offer citizenship to Syrians.
