Tears and hope as Syrians return home from Turkey

YAYLADAGI, Turkey (Reuters) – Ala Jabeer cried as he prepared to cross from Turkey into Syria with his 10-year-old daughter on Tuesday, thirteen years after the war forced him to flee his home.

He returns without his wife and three of his children who died in devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria last year.

Father and daughter left days after Syrian rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad from Damascus, and a day after President Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey was opening its Yayladagi border gate to manage the return of some of the more than 3 million Syrian migrants it hosts.

“Just as I cried for the children I lost in the earthquake, I am crying today because I am leaving Hatay and Turkey behind,” said Jabeer, a former shipworker who arrived in Turkey’s Hatay province in 2011.

Dual earthquakes in early 2023 killed more than 50,000 people in southern Turkey, with the city of Antakya where Jabeer and his family lived among the hardest hit. The region is still recovering from the widespread destruction.

Over the weekend rebels seized Damascus and Assad fled to Russia following 13 years of civil war. Turkey has said it gave no support and had no involvement in the offensive by the Syrian opposition forces it has backed for years against Assad.

Yet Syrians in Turkey have been excited by the prospect of returning home since the rebellion.

Jabeer was hopeful for the future as he completed paperwork for him and his daughter Sirin at a mobile service unit at the border in Yayladagi, which was quiet despite Erdogan’s move to reopen it to ease pressure on another crossing in the area.

“God willing, things will be better than under Assad’s government. We’ve already seen that his oppression is over. We are going back because now we think that the ones who took over are already doing things to end oppression,” he said.

“The most important reason for me to return is that my mother lives in Latakia. She can take care of my daughter, so I can work,” Jabeer said, adding that he was grateful to Turkey for taking care of them with health services, shelter and jobs.

On Monday, Erdogan highlighted the goal of “voluntary, safe, dignified, and regular returns” as Syria stabilises.

The Yayladagi crossing close to the northwest edge of Syria had been closed since 2013 due to nearby fighting.

NATO member Turkey controls swathes of land in northern Syria after several cross-border incursions against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara sees as a terrorist group tied to PKK militants who have fought the Turkish state for 40 years.

Turkey said on Sunday that it wanted the new Syrian administration to be inclusive and for Syrians to determine their own future.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay, Mert Ozkan, Dilara Senkaya; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Jonathan Spicer, Alexandra Hudson)