More than 30,000 Syrians returned home since al-Assad’s fall, Turkiye says

Nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned home since the fall of strongman Bashar al-Assad, according to the interior minister of neighbouring Turkiye, which shelters some 3 million Syrian refugees.

Meanwhile, inside the country on Friday, Syrians rallied for a day of remembrance in honour of the victims of the al-Assad regime and the 13-year civil war.

Millions fled Syria after the war in 2011, but since the fall of al-Assad on December 8, there are hopes many will return.

“The number of people who went back [from Turkiye] is 30,663,” Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told the local TGRT news channel on Friday, saying “30 percent” of them had been born in Turkiye.

On Tuesday, Yerlikaya said more than 25,000 Syrians had returned in remarks to state news agency Anadolu, adding that they would be allowed to leave and re-enter Turkiye 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 Turkiye are from, he said without giving further details. And it would reopen its consulate general in Aleppo “in a few days”, he added, echoing remarks earlier this week by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkiye’s Damascus embassy reopened on December 14, six days after al-Assad was toppled by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels.

A Syrian family prepares to cross over into Syria from Turkiye through the Kassab crossing [Aaref Watad/AFP]

‘I want the truth’

Meanwhile, in the capital Damascus and elsewhere, Syrians held a day of remembrance for those killed and imprisoned during al-Assad’s nearly 25-year reign.

Dozens of sombre protesters gathered in central Damascus’s Hijaz Square to press the new authorities about the fate of relatives who went missing under al-Assad, holding pictures of the disappeared, the AFP news agency reported.

“It is time for tyrants to be held accountable,” read a black banner unfurled from the balcony of the elegant Ottoman-era train station. Other placards read, “Revealing the fate of the missing is a right,” and “I don’t want an unmarked grave for my son, I want the truth.”

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Damascus, said people also gathered in other areas including the Umayyad Square.

“I’ve seen many of the people with banners and posters and pictures of their loved ones who were killed or disappeared in prisons during the time of Bashar al-Assad or his father, Hafez al-Assad,” he said.

At one point, Ahelbarra described the scenes on the streets as “chaotic”, as people were seen celebrating firing their guns in the air.

Syria’s prisons had been a key pillar in supporting the al-Assad regime. Pictures, smuggled out of Syria in 2013, showed what Human Rights Watch said was “irrefutable evidence of widespread torture, starvation, beatings, and disease in Syrian government detention facilities”, in what amounted to a crime against humanity, the rights group said.

‘Interference’

Elsewhere on Friday, Iran’s top diplomat warned against “destructive interference” in Syria’s future and said decisions should lie solely with the country’s people.

Iran “considers the decision-making about the future of Syria to be the sole responsibility of the people … without destructive interference or foreign imposition,” Abbas Araghchi wrote in Chinese state media’s People’s Daily while on a visit to Beijing.

He also emphasised Iran’s respect for Syria’s “unity, national sovereignty and territorial integrity”.

Abbas Araghchi touched down in the Chinese capital on Friday afternoon, Iranian state media reported, to begin his first official visit to the country since being appointed foreign minister. China and Iran were both supporters of former President al-Assad.

On the humanitarian front, a United Nations health official said some 50 tonnes of European Union-funded medical supplies are expected to enter Syria by the end of the year.

The supplies, which were sent from an EU stockpile in Dubai, landed in Istanbul on Thursday and were to be driven to the border in the coming days, Mrinalini Santhanam from the World Health Organization’s Gaziantep office in southern Turkiye, told AFP, saying they would be driven south and likely cross the border into Syria “on December 31”.

The shipment includes 8,000 emergency surgical kits, anaesthetic supplies, IV fluids, sterilisation materials and medications to prevent disease outbreaks, with the EU saying it would be sent to support “healthcare systems in Idlib and northern Aleppo”.

The civil war, which broke out in 2011, had “devastated the country and the healthcare system. Almost half of the hospitals in Syria are not functional,” he said.