Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced on Thursday that 52,622 Syrian refugees returned to their countries in one month since the fall of the Assad regime in neighboring Syria.
Yerlikaya visited Cilvegözü, a major border crossing in the Reyhanlı district of the southern province of Hatay, where scores of refugees pass daily. The minister terms first returnees as “pioneers” who will give an idea to those mulling returning about the current situation in postwar Syria.
The minister said Türkiye hosted more than 2.8 million Syrian nationals. “Our Syrian brothers and sisters, since 2017, have returned to their homeland in a safe, voluntary, and dignified way. The total number of returnees since 2017 has reached 792,625,” he said. He reminded that around 11,000 Syrian refugees were returning monthly to Syria in the first 11 months of 2024 and this number significantly increased after the fall of the Baathist regime. Among returnees are 9,729 families.
Experts, however, do not expect to see a large wave of further returns as some of the refugees have spent more than a decade in Türkiye and around 1.5 million of them are minors who have had most if not all of their education in their host country. Earlier voluntary returns to Syria were largely tied to the creation of safe zones in Syria’s north.
Türkiye launched several cross-border military operations in the region against terrorist groups Daesh and PKK/YPG in the past decade, helping the Syrian opposition gain control of wide swathes of land in the north.
Since the current rulers of Syria toppled the Baathist regime, Ankara has pledged support for the recovery and reconstruction of the war-torn country. On the other hand, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan repeatedly said no one would be forced to return to Syria and that they would continue hosting those wishing to stay. The government also granted a limited permit for returnees to return to Türkiye, which they called home for years.