At least three million Syrian refugees settled in Turkey following the start of the civil war in Syria [Getty/file photo]
Nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned home since the fall of Bashar al-Assad earlier this month, Turkey’s interior minister said on Friday, the figure rising by about 5,000 in just three days.
“The number of people who went back is 30,663,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told TGRT news channel, saying “30 percent” of them had been born in Turkey.
Turkey is home to nearly three million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the brutal civil war in 2011, which killed at least half a million Syrians and displaced millions more. The fall of Bashar al-Assad raised hopes in Turkey that many would go back.
Over the years, Syrians have faced difficulties in Turkey. The group has often been subject to racist attacks, and has been used as a scapegoat by politicians amid Turkey’s economic woes.
On Tuesday, Yerlikaya said more than 25,000 Syrians had returned in remarks to state news agency Anadolu, saying they would be allowed to leave and re-enter Turkey three times in the first half of 2025.
Ankara would also open “a migration management office” in Aleppo, Syria’s second city, where most of the refugees living in Turkey are from, he said om Friday, without giving further details.
Turkey was also to reopen its consulate general in Aleppo “in a few days”, he added, echoing remarks earlier this week by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey’s Damascus embassy reopened on December 14, six days after Assad was toppled by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels in a lightening offensive which swept most of the country.
Although Ankara had no direct link to the offensive, it has long had a working relationship with HTS, becoming the first nation to reopen its mission there. Turkey has also backed opposition groups against Assad.
The embassy had closed on March 26, 2012, a year after Syria’s civil war began.
