On 4 October 2016, a news story was released by Al Jazeera in which Jordan was placed on top of a list of the countries that host the largest refugee populations around the world, referencing an Amnesty International report.

“Jordan, which has taken in more than 2.7 million people, was named as the top refugee hosting country, followed by Turkey, over 2.5 million; Pakistan, 1.6 million; and Lebanon, more than 1.5 million,” the story said.

The numbers provided by Al Jazeera, however, were mentioned by Amnesty International as the numbers of the year 2015. They did not reflect the current situation in Turkey because the number of refugees Turkey welcomed has continued to increase since then.

“As of the end of 2015 Jordan hosted the largest number of refugees in the world (2.1 million Palestinian refugees who have lived in the country for decades, and 664,100 refugees under the mandate of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR). Turkey hosted the second largest refugee population, 2.5 million, including the highest number of refugees from Syria. The number of refugees entering Turkey continued to grow in 2016 and according to government sources reached 3 million in June (around 2.7 million are from Syria),” read Amnesty’s report.

The fact that the number of refugees living in Turkey exceeded 3 million as of 2016 was also recognized in a factsheet composed by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.

“The overwhelming influx of refugees into Turkey has reached over 3.1 million people, making Turkey the host country with the largest refugee population in the world,” the factsheet reported.

Please click here for a relevant article from Fact-Checking Turkey about Turkey’s open door policy.