"We will send back Syrian refugees in two years' time"

Turkey's main opposition leader and the presidential candidate of a six-party bloc said on Tuesday that they will send Syrian refugees back to their home country within two years if they win the elections on 14 May and come to power.

Speaking in a border village of Turkey's southern Hatay province, Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said:

"We will send our Syrian brothers and sisters back to their homeland at the latest in two years' time, and we will do this without bringing any disgrace to our noble nation, without letting our nation be branded as racist. I want everybody to know that."

He added that the new government would also send back Afghan refugees in Turkey back to Iran, the country they came from.

"I want Syria, Iran and Afghanistan to be aware of this," he continued. "We don't have any hidden agenda, and neither do we have any prejudice against any country or foreign national, in short against any foreigners. All the same, we want to live freely in our own country. We will not accept demographic changes in our own country."

Stressing the vital importance of border security for all nations, Kilicdaroglu went on to say that defending Turkey's national sovereignty by means of border security was "a debt of honor."

"We will definitely do the reverse of what the current president has been doing," he said. "Nobody will anymore be able to freely cross into Turkey through the borders."