ALEPPO: At Bab al-Salameh crossing in Aleppo’s countryside, trucks loaded with belongings line up as Syrians coming back from Turkey wait to cross the border.
Among them was Syrian returnee Ahmed al-Hadid who had fled his then-war-torn country and found refuge in the Turkish city of Mersin a decade ago.
“Syria has been liberated, we returned to our country like any expat,” he said upon his arrival to al-Bab city in Aleppo’s countryside, hoping the future of Syria would be a prosperous one.
According to Qutaiba Naji, director of Bab al-Salameh crossing at the Syrian-Turkish border, around 100,000 Syrians have returned from Turkey to Syria through border crossings, since the beginning of 2025, under a voluntary return programme.
Naji told Reuters that the number of returnees per day has surged to around 1,000 or 1,200, expecting it to increase even more at the end of the school year in Turkey.
The civil war that grew out of a 2011 uprising against Bashar al-Assad killed hundreds of thousands of people and drove millions abroad.
Syrian rebels ousted Assad and seized control of Damascus in December last year, forcing him to flee and ending his family’s decades of rule. In Turkey, the presence of nearly 3 million Syrians has become a sensitive political issue. Many have faced bouts of anti-migrant sentiment that made them feel like unwanted guests, and some rushed to the border right after Assad’s fall. –Agencies
