Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for a long time said that there are 3.6 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, but Der Spiegel this week in a detailed article on the new issue finds the numbers might have been distorted.

Speaking to German magazine Franck Düvell, the Head of the Migration Department at the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research, said that Erdogan and Turkish officials have boasted the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey. He said they would be between 2.7 and 3 million, and not 3.6 million as stated by Turkey.

The German immigration expert told Der Spiegal that they have compiled statistics from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Turkish Ministry of Interior-linked Directorate General of Migration Management.

Düvell said that the differences between the figures published by the Turkish and international organizations do not match and added that they may have counted also Syrian refugees who lived in Turkey before but have returned to their country or gone to Europe.