Syrians leaving Turkey will lose their “temporary protection” status and cannot return.
A few hundred Syrian migrants gathered at the Turkey-Syria border as dawn broke on Tuesday morning, waiting to return home for the first time in years.
Turkish soldiers waved them into a long line for processing. Some carried cardboard boxes, others lugged bin bags filled to the brim. Every container was full of an array of belongings – rugs, clothes, roller skates, electric stoves.
“It’s over! We will never come back here to Turkey,” said Zayliha Sadiq, 51, who was leaving with her husband and their three children at the Cilvegozu checkpoint in southern Turkey flanked by hilly terrain next to the Mediterranean coast.
On the other side is Aleppo, once the largest city in Syria, just 50km further down the road.
“My heart is so full today,” said her husband, Maarif, who plans to reopen his bakery in Idlib. “After so many years away, I am so, so happy to return to my country.”
Their youngest daughter, Karime, 7, who was born in exile in Turkey will see Syria and meet her grandparents for the first time.
The Sadiqs are among some Syrians returning, or making plans to do so, just days after a rebel coalition’s sudden offensive forced now-former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to flee, and his government to collapse.
A new transitional government was swiftly set up and is expected to begin operations soon.
Syrians leaving Turkey will not be allowed to return, as the “temporary protection” status extended to them by Ankara, which allowed them to stay all these years, will be cancelled upon exit.
What comes next in Syria is still full of unknowns, and, for many, there isn’t even a home to return to as so much was destroyed during the war.
“When we left, everything in Aleppo and Idlib was in ruins; it was all just dirt,” remembered Zayliha.
But the fall of the Assad regime has sparked celebrations among many Syrians – some even set up small bonfires by the border the evening before – and has been enough to send many on the road back in anticipation of reuniting with relatives.
“My parents are waiting for us in Syria,” said Mohammad Diaa Al-Ahmar, 31, a medic who fled to Turkey nine years ago with just the clothes on his back.
His wife and infant daughter were killed; their home destroyed; and by August 2016, bombs reduced to rubble the field hospital he worked at in Daraya, a suburb of the Syrian capital of Damascus.
After years of saving lives and treating war injuries, he decided to try to save himself and made a run for the border to shelter in Turkey.
Here, he slowly set up a new life, providing medical care to the growing Syrian population. Eventually, he married again and had another daughter, now 5, whom he named Damascus – in memory of his homeland.
Anti-regime armed groups seize central Hama, Syria. Photo / Getty Images
Under the bright morning sun, he unloaded their belongings from a car – a television, some kitchen pots, his daughter’s bicycle – piling them up next to a grove of olive trees by the border checkpoint.
He and a neighbouring family – in total, a group of 12 – hoped to cross into Syria, a return they had dreamt about finally becoming a reality.
As the day wore on, more taxis pulled up to the border. Families piled out, one by one, unloading bags big and small.
Mothers clutched their babies, while children clutched their toys. One small girl hugged her doll as she toddled toward the queue by the border checkpoint.
A boy shrugged on a backpack adorned with Spiderman. Later, a pregnant woman arrived with two cats in tow – en route back home to Idlib.
A handful of young Turkish men offered their assistance, for a small fee, to those who struggled to carry the weight of their possessions.
Ahmar, 15, who snuck across from Syria to Turkey four years ago, was also waiting to return.
“Assad is a killer; he’s not a good person,” said Ahmar, whose cousins died in the war.
After the news of the regime’s fall reached him at the Istanbul shoe factory he worked in, he packed two backpacks and boarded a 15-hour bus travelling all the way down from the north to the south of Turkey.
He slept under a copse of trees on Monday evening, ready to get going early on Tuesday.
“No, I won’t miss Istanbul,” he said. “But I did buy a watch here as a gift for my father.”
Turkey opened its doors when civil war broke out in 2011 in Syria, with which it shares a vast, 560 mile-long land border. Those arriving were granted “temporary protection” status, the main legal mechanism by which most Syrians were able to remain in Turkey.
As the bloody war ground on and the Assad regime became ever more brutal, greater numbers escaped to Turkey. Now, it’s home to the world’s largest group of Syrians, estimated at about 3.2 million people, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
From here, some fled onward to other countries, including the UK, at times by paying thousands of dollars to human smugglers. Many of them died along the way.
The departure of some Syrians may partly alleviate some domestic political pressures as anti-refugee sentiment has risen significantly in recent years, especially with the Turkish economy suffering a severe downturn post-pandemic.
“I like Turkey,” said Melis, 14, the middle child in the Sadiq family, who was only a year old when her family fled to Turkey. “But I’m not sure if they really like us being here.”
On Tuesday, Turkey opened another border crossing, Yayladagi, which had been closed for 12 years, to process Syrian migrants wishing to leave, though only a handful of people queued there to start.
At Cilvegozu, some NGOs have begun setting up tents to hand out free meals for those waiting to cross.
All three border crossings in Turkey’s Hatay province have started operating 24 hours a day in anticipation of a higher volume of migrants arriving in the coming days and weeks.
Many hoped that going back to Syria would help reduce their expenses as many migrants work low-paying menial jobs and inflation in Turkey has soared in recent years.
Some Syrians are coming from as far away as Europe for a chance to return home.
Nedal Al-Hallak, 65, who hails from the Syrian city of Hama and now lives in Turkey, was waiting to say farewell to his cousin, who had come from Germany to cross the border on Tuesday to see their family.
But not everyone wants to leave.
“It’s good for us Syrians now that the war is over,” said Al-Hallak.
For him, Syria is a place of both wonderful and terrible memories – his first home, but also the place where his 17-year-old cousin was tortured to death at the notorious Sednaya prison near Damascus, known locally as the “human slaughterhouse”.
“I will stay here. Now my children are settled, and we have a life here. Now, this is our vatan,” he said, which means “homeland” in Turkish – and Arabic.
