Almost 10,000 Turkish nationals evacuated from Ukraine since Russian invasion

Turkey has evacuated almost 10,000 Turkish nationals from Ukraine, said Ankara’s foreign ministry in a statement on Thursday.

Mevlut Cavusoglu said that 406 citizens were evacuated on Thursday, brining the overall total to 9,653 Turkish nationals, in comments made on his official Twitter account.

Cavusoglu said that 100 nationals departed from the capital Kyiv via a train service, while others were evacuated via buses from the cities of Odessa, Lviv, Zhytomyr and Khmelnytsky.

He later added that the group arrived on the country’s national carrier, Turkish Airlines, from the Romanian capital Bucharest and Warsaw, Poland’s capital city due to the closure of Ukrainian airspace.

Bugün Ukrayna’dan 406 kardeşimiz daha yola çıktı. Tahliye ettiğimiz vatandaşlarımızın sayısı 9️⃣6️⃣5️⃣3️⃣ oldu.

Ayrıca Ukrayna’dan tahliye ettiğimiz vatandaşlarımız bugün Bükreş ve Varşova’dan Türk Hava Yollarımızla ülkemize sağ salim geldiler.
Hoşgeldiniz! 🇹🇷 pic.twitter.com/4XheRUXkDU

— Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu (@MevlutCavusoglu) March 3, 2022

Turkey's ambassador to Ukraine, Yagmur Ahmet Guldere said on Tuesday that the evacuation process experienced some difficulties due to heightened security concerns, according to Daily Sabah.

Ukraine was home to an estimated 20,000 Turkish nationals prior to Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the country last week, with 5,000 leaving just before the conflict broke out, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

Since then, authorities have stepped up efforts to evacuate the remainder of Turkish nationals, with Ankara’s foreign missions in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and Moldova coordinating evacuation missions.

Crimean Tatar Turks and Azerbaijanis also constitute a small number of the recent evacuees.

Turkey is currently activating the 1936 Montreux Treaty which grants Ankara greater control over the Bosphorus and Dardanelles Straits.

Russia has been using the straits to reach Ukraine during its military aggression of its neighbouring country, which Turkey labelled as a "war".

More than 2,000 Ukrainians have been killed since Russia’s invasion, according to Kyiv’s state emergency service, with almost 836,000 Ukrainians fleeing the country.