7,600 Syrians head home after Bashar al-Assad’s fall, Turkey reports

More than 7,600 Syrian migrants returned to their homeland through Turkey’s border in the five days following the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s interior minister said Sunday (December 15).

In a statement posted on social media platform X, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya detailed the daily numbers of Syrians who “returned voluntarily” from Turkey between December 9 and 13, totaling 7,621.

Turkey, which hosts nearly three million Syrian refugees who fled the country’s civil war since 2011, has expressed hope that Assad’s ousting will encourage more migrants to return home.

Rising border crossings

AFP reported that hundreds of refugees gathering at the Cilvegozu border crossing, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Aleppo, on Monday.

According to Yerlikaya, 1,259 migrants crossed into Syria that day. The following days saw increasing numbers: 1,669 on Tuesday, 1,293 on Wednesday, 1,553 on Thursday, and 1,847 on Friday.

In response to the surge, Turkey expanded its daily border crossing capacity from 3,000 to between 15,000 and 20,000 within 48 hours of Assad’s fall, Yerlikaya said earlier in the week.

Turkey, which shares a 900-kilometer (560-mile) border with Syria, has five operational border crossings and plans to open a sixth in the far west to “ease the traffic.”

Political and social pressures

Anti-Syrian sentiment has been rising in Turkey, where pressure on the government to reduce the refugee population is high. Officials are keen to facilitate returns, particularly from regions like Aleppo, which accounts for 42 per cent of the Syrian refugee population in Turkey, or around 1.24 million people, according to the interior ministry.

The fall of Assad has brought renewed hope for some Syrian refugees to rebuild their lives in their homeland, though the broader implications of the political transition remain uncertain.

With inputs from agencies