7,500 Syrians return home

More than 7,600 Syrian migrants have crossed the border into Turkey in the five days since the fall of Syrian strongman President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s interior minister said on Sunday.

In a statement on social network X, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said that the total number of Syrians who “voluntarily returned from Turkey” each day between December 9 and 13 exceeded seven thousand seven hundred.

Turkey is home to nearly 3 million refugees who fled Syria after the civil war began in 2011, and Assad’s fall has raised hopes that many will return home.

On Monday morning, AFP reporters saw hundreds of refugees gathering at the Silvegozu border crossing, about 50 kilometers west of Syria’s second city, Aleppo, and 1,259 people had crossed in a single day.

Within 48 hours of Assad’s fall, Turkey had increased its daily crossing capacity from 3,000 to 15,000 to 20,000. Turkey shares a 900-kilometer border with Syria and has said it will open a sixth border crossing in the far west to “facilitate traffic.”

Ankara is keen to see as many refugees as possible return to their homeland as anti-Syrian sentiment grows within Turkish society. According to the interior ministry, around 1.24 million of them (about 42 percent) are from the Aleppo region.

Meanwhile, Turkey has said it is ready to provide military support to Syria’s new Islamist-led government installed by rebels seeking to oust Assad if requested by them. Agency