ANKARA (Anadolu) –Turkey and the neighboring countries are the ones shouldering the “real burden” of the global migration and refugee crises, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday. “The real burden of the issue of migration and refugees does not fall on developed nations with a strong voice, but on countries like ours that are neighbors to the crisis regions,” Erdogan said in a video message to the Global Parliamentary Conference on migration. The two-day event, co-hosted by the Grand National Assembly of Turkey and Inter-Parliamentary Union, kicked off in Istanbul as the annual World Refugee Day is marked around the globe.

Erdogan said some countries were using “the few hundred refugees they have accepted as advertising material,” criticizing them for taking “no responsibility in the face of the deepening humanitarian crises.”