Ahmad Hameed was cheerful over the phone on a video call with his girlfriend, Rasha, in Damascus.
“Hello habibti, I can’t believe we’ve made it!”
Calling in the early hours of Sunday 8 December from the streets of Gaziantep – a southeastern Turkish city hosting a large population of Syrians in exile who settled there over the past 13 years – he explained he hadn’t seen Rasha since 2019, the year he left Damascus because of growing political pressures on his family.
“Now I can finally see you again, Inshallah (God willing),” Hameed said before the conversation was cut short by the patchy internet connection in Syria.
He recorded a couple of voice notes to send Rasha of the chants and cheers around him and went to join people celebrating with a huge smile on his face.
“Most of the 500,000 Syrians who have been living in exile in Gaziantep are spending these days reconnecting with relatives and friends and planning their trip back to the homeland amid caution”
As soon as news of Assad’s fall was official on Sunday, Syrians in Turkey took to the streets, driving around, honking and waving the flag of the revolution, the Free Syria flag, from their windows and gathering at local parks and squares to celebrate.
Turkey hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees worldwide, around 3.5 million according to UNHCR data, two million of whom have settled in its southeastern provinces.
Just a two-hour car drive from Aleppo, Gaziantep is home to half a million of them, which has turned it, alongside Berlin, into one of the major communities of Syrians outside Syria.
Most are people who have been unable to return home, fearing political repercussions and threats of detention and torture.
In Turkey, where they have often felt unwelcomed – with the latest political campaign built around promises of their forced deportations – now there are lots of expectations for them to return.
Many have already started queuing at the Cilvegözü Sınır border gate with Syria since the early hours of Monday morning.
“It’s like a nightmare ended and a nice dream replaced it,” said Hatim al-Abdullah, a 26-year-old Syrian from Palmyra who has been living in Turkey since 2016.
Hatim had recently acquired Turkish citizenship because he thought he would never be able to go back to his homeland. “I was never expecting this to happen. It has made me so happy.”
He spent Saturday night on a video call with one of his uncles who lives in Homs, weeping in joy all night. His uncle live-streamed the liberation of their city for Hatim and his parents to see, as they ate Homs’ famous dessert, halawet jibn.
“I have never been so happy in Turkey before. I have my grandmother and some uncles still in Syria, they are also so happy, as is every Syrian I know, from relatives to friends scattered everywhere,” he adds.
“We all haven’t slept in a week, but from now on we’ll have sweet dreams.”
Like Hatim, most of the 500,000 Syrians who have been living in exile in Gaziantep are spending these days reconnecting with relatives and friends and planning their trip back to the homeland amid caution.
[Martin Pavlik]
Nashwan Jamali, the founder of Room 41, an electronic music club for Syrian DJs in exile, has been spending the past week or so — when rumours of the regime’s fall began filling many refugees with hope — coordinating to organise the first electronic music party in his liberated hometown of Aleppo.
“Many thought I was crazy to celebrate so early because we still don’t know what the future holds for Syria, we’re still in transition,” Nashwan said.
“But it’s better to take advantage now, to help build a modern Syria before things go back to how they were before, or worse.”
With cheerful hopes for the future of his country, he decided to ignore the many speculations of what could go wrong and just focus on the present.
He opened an Instagram page for the Syria branch of his music club, and published his first post ‘Soon in Free Syria.’
He then descended to Gaziantep’s 100 Yil Kultur Parki, the same place that just over a year ago had become the symbol of Gaziantep’s Syrians second displacement following a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Turkey-Syrian border, which left many stranded in the cold in makeshift tents for several days in this very location.
“Now we’ll connect it to a happy memory,” said feminist writer Raghda Khubieh.
She is currently cautious about the future of Syria and is still unsure whether she will return, but she is at least hopeful this will be a good sign for the whole region to get rid of tyranny, she said, referring to Israel and Palestine.
From the gathering at the park, Abdul al-Hassan felt hopeful and hugged everyone he met, congratulating each other for the fall of the regime that forced them into exile.
“We deserved to end this year with the win of our revolution”
“We’ve been through a lot, first the war, then the earthquake, the national elections that wanted to kick us out, fears of deportations and xenophobic attacks against us this summer,” Abdul said.
“We deserved to end this year with the win of our revolution. Now we are no longer Syrian refugees, just Syrians. We have a home.”
He added that it’s been difficult being away from his family, who he hasn’t seen since he had to leave Manbij in 2018 after taking part in anti-government protests and foreign media work.
He felt hopeful he might reunite with them soon, but just a few hours later, the military fighting in his hometown made him realise the path to reconciliation could still be long.
For others, like Omran Jamous, who was hoping to apply for asylum in Europe, the liberation brings some bitterness alongside happiness.
Despite his joy to find out his city of Saraqib was among the first to be liberated, and that he could finally see his old parents again, he also felt discouraged by what this meant for Syrians in the West.
“With the current stop to new applications, I think many of us have missed an opportunity to receive asylum and live a better life in Europe,” he said bitterly.
“Going back to a country that is still shattered in ruins might not be the best decision yet. Some of us will stay in Turkey for now, and keep in touch with our friends and families who have returned to get a feel of what’s the best next step.”
Hatim, on the other hand, is about to finish his university engineering internship in Turkey, but a month from now he’s decided to travel back to Syria.
“We need workers to rebuild my country: engineers, doctors… so I would like to go back and try to help as much as I can if I can,” he said.
“Of course, there are still concerns about what will happen next, but for a few more days we don’t want to care, let us celebrate our joy and hopes for a brighter future for Syria in peace.”
Stefania D’Ignoti is a freelance journalist covering migration and society in Italy and the Middle East
Follow her on X: @stef_dgn
