I know that we aren’t crying ourselves to sleep over what happens in Turkey, but just so you know. Turkish citizens are fed up with refugees. Authorities plan to move Syrians off the streets and into tent cities to avoid more such clashes.
From the BBC:
Hundreds of people have clashed with Turkish police in Istanbul during a protest against the rising number of refugees from Syria.
Businesses were attacked, windows broken and a car overturned in the western suburb of Ikitelli, on the European side of the city.
Youths shouted anti-Syrian slogans and Turkish media said five people were taken to hospital.
As many as 1.2 million Syrians have gone to Turkey to escape the civil war.
Riot police moved in to halt the unrest on Sunday evening.
An estimated 300 people were said to have taken in the violence, some of them armed with sticks and knives.
The large number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has heightened tensions in some cities, particularly in the east.
How many Syrians will the US be taking?
We should know soon. The US State Department’s 2015 fiscal year begins October 1 and so in the next month the State Department (the Administration) will be sending its “Presidential Determination” to Capitol Hill where Obama’s wishes for refugees for your towns and cities for the next year will be summarily rubber-stamped by the do-nothings in our Congressional leadership. I don’t know that anyone has ever objected to a Presidential Determination.
Last year there was some talk of taking 2,000 Syrians in 2014 and that seems not to have materialized (security concerns?). The resettlement contractors have been strangely silent for months after they publicly demanded 12,000-15,000 Syrians be admitted each year for the next 5 years—did they find out that their public pleas were only stirring up even more opposition?