More than 7,600 Syrian migrants have crossed the Turkish border to return home in the five days since the fall of Syria’s powerful President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s interior minister said on Sunday. In a statement on X, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya listed the total number of Syrians who “voluntarily returned from Turkey” each day between December 9 and 13. The five-day tally included 7,621 migrants.
Turkey is home to about three million refugees who fled Syria after the civil war began in 2011, and the fall of Assad has raised hopes that many will return home. On Monday morning, AFP reporters saw hundreds of refugees gathered at the Silvegozu border, about 50 kilometers west of Syria’s second city, Aleppo, and interior ministry figures showed 1,259 people had crossed that day.
According to Yerlikaya, 1,669 people crossed the border the next day, 1,293 on Wednesday, 1,553 on Thursday, and 1,847 on Friday. Within 48 hours of Assad’s fall, Turkey had increased its daily border crossing capacity from 3,000 to 15,000 to 20,000. Turkey shares a 900km border with Syria and has said it will open a sixth border crossing in the far west to “facilitate traffic”.
As anti-Syrian sentiment grows within Turkish society, Ankara is eager to see as many refugees as possible return to their homeland. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, about 1.24 million of them (about 42 percent) are from the Aleppo region.
Turkey ready to provide military support to new government: Defense Minister
Meanwhile, Turkey has said it is ready to provide military support to Syria’s new Islamist-led government, which it has installed, if requested by the rebels who ousted Assad. Defense Minister Yasir Guler told reporters on Sunday that the new leadership should be given “a chance” and that Turkey was “ready to provide the necessary assistance if requested by the new administration,” in response to reports in state news agency Anadolu and other Turkish media outlets.
“We need to see what the new administration does. We think they need to be given a chance,” Guler said of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel alliance, which is affiliated with al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch and has been designated a ‘terrorist’ organization by several Western governments. But HTS has sought to moderate its rhetoric, insisting that its transitional government will uphold the rule of law and protect the rights of all Syrians.
Guler said the new administration had promised to “respect all government institutions, the United Nations and other international organizations” and to report any evidence of chemical weapons to the OPCW monitoring body.
