Internally displaced children walk inside Al-Karameh refugee camp beside the Syrian-Turkiish border in the Northern Idlib countryside.

Turkey has provided some 1.5 million Syrian refugees with biometric IDs after its earlier move to place some 3,000 of them in a winter camp, a newspaper citing the Interior Ministry and the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) reported Monday.

The new AFAD figure comes after Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş said earlier that some 1.2 million Syrians have been registered, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

The IDs include fingerprints and personal data, which will also be used in the provision of aid, job offers, education and social opportunities to displaced people.

The database will also be used to identify those who have been involved in criminal activity.

AFAD says Turkey hosts 1.7 million Syrian refugees, of whom 230,000 are in camps, with access to facilities such as schools, supermarkets and even cinemas.

AFAD is also currently building a 35,000-capacity camp in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa’s Suruç district and another 15,000-capacity facility in Mardin’s Derik district.

Hurriyet said these camps, in addition to the existing ones, will be operative by the end of this month.

Turkey is also planning to launch social programs, dubbed “living together,” based on the assumption that the majority of the refugees will not return.

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