More than 30,000 Syrians return home, Turkey says

ANKARA - Nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned home since the fall of strongman Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s Interior Minister said on Dec 27, 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 per cent” of them had been born in Turkey.

Turkey is home to nearly three million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011, with

the fall of President Bashar al-Assad

raising hopes many would go back.

On Dec 24, Mr Yerlikaya said in remarks to state news agency Anadolou that more than 25,000 Syrians had returned, 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 on Dec 27, 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 Dec 14,

six days after Mr Assad was toppled by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels.

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.

The embassy had closed on March 26, 2012, a year after Syria’s civil war began. AFP