Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday that he had rejected an offer to take a share of Syria’s oil because he cares about the people of Syria, not the country’s oil reserves.

Axar.az reports citing MEM that speaking at the 2nd International Ombudsman Conference in Istanbul, Erdogan explained that some countries are in the “process of sharing the oil reserves” in Syria and have offered Turkey a part but Ankara refused because it is not interested in the country’s resources. The Turkish president did not mention which countries he was referring to.

“Turkey hosts four million refugees. While the European Union has contributed with only €3 billion [$3.3 billion] to shouldering the burden of refugees, Turkey has so far spent about $40 billion on them,” Erdogan said.

“We cannot send them back to explosive barrels,” in reference to airstrikes carried out by the Syrian regime army and Russian forces against civilians.