http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_g ... sId=288953
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu departed for Myanmar on Wednesday with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's wife and daughter to deliver aid to the province of Arakan, where a massacre of Rohingya Muslims is being carried out by extremists.
A Turkish delegation led by Davutoğlu and including Erdoğan's wife Emine and daughter Sümeyye, left for Myanmar on Wednesday afternoon in a plane loaded with aid supplies.
The delegation will visit camps where Rohingya Muslims have taken shelter and distribute humanitarian aid to them. The aid from Turkey will be the first foreign aid accepted by Myanmar besides UN aid.
The Prime Ministry has also recently launched an aid campaign for Rohingya Muslims and the donations collected so far have exceeded $1.2 million.
A statement from the Foreign Ministry said apart from its significance in addressing the situation of the Rohingya Muslims, the “historic” visit will also be a chance to improve mutual relations with Myanmar.
According to UN sources, since the beginning of the new wave of ethno-religious tensions and attacks by extremist Buddhists and other fanatical groups that target Muslims in Myanmar, nearly 100,000 people have left their homes. To flee to safety, some Rohingya Muslims, with children in their arms, walked barefoot in heavy rain through the jungle to reach the coast, from where they sailed to Bangladesh.
