The NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday praised Turkey's efforts in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS)."Turkey is playing an important role in the fight against ISIS and extremism in Iraq and Syria," he said, addressing the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee and Sub-Committee on Security and Defense in Brussels. "Turkey is the ally most affected by the crisis in Syria and Iraq," Stoltenberg said, pointing out that Turkey has received hundreds of thousands of refugees.On Monday in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan denounced reports alleging that Turkey was cooperating with organizations such as ISIS.Stoltenberg also told a European Parliament hearing Monday that NATO and the EU should combine efforts to make member countries more "resilient" to the so-called hybrid brand of warfare that Western governments accuse Russia of waging in Ukraine. Along with military force, hybrid warfare includes cyber-attacks, the use of social media, deception and disinformation. The NATO secretary-general also said the EU should assist friendly countries to its south and southeast like Jordan to combat the spread of Islamic extremism. Stoltenberg told European lawmakers that "the time has come to spend more on defense."In a briefing to the U.N. Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Antonio Guterres said that the Syrian refugee crisis had overwhelmed existing response capacities, with 3.8 million refugees registered in neighboring countries.According to the UNHRC, Turkey is hosting over 1.6 million Syrian refugees who have fled the civil war in their country, which has also paved the way for extremist groups such as ISIS, to gain a foothold in the region.Syria has been gripped by almost constant fighting since the regime of President Bashar Assad responded to anti-government protests in March 2011 with a violent crackdown that sparked a conflict that has spiraled into a civil war.Urging the international community to share the burden, Guterres said the refugee influx had severely damaged the economies of Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.He commended a temporary protection decree issued by Turkey last year to provide Syrians with access to the country's labor market as well as free education and health care."But despite this positive development in Turkey, it is no surprise that growing desperation is forcing more and more Syrian refugees to move further afield," he said.He said Syrians accounted for one-third of the nearly 220,000 migrants who arrived to European shores in boats last year."Since the start of 2015, over 370 people have died trying to cross the Mediterranean – that's one person drowning for every twenty who made it," he said.He warned that thousands more could face death unless Europe decides to "step up its capacity to save lives with a robust search and rescue operation in the Central Mediterranean."