Over 25,000 Syrian refugees have crossed the Turkish border to return to their country in the last two weeks since the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced today, quoted by Agence France-Presse, BTA reported.
Earlier, Turkish authorities had announced that 7,621 Syrian refugees had returned to Syria from Turkey between December 9 and 13, the four days after Assad was overthrown. In Turkey, which shares a border with Syria of over 900 km, there are still about 2.92 million Syrians who fled the war that has devastated their country since 2011, Yerlikaya told Anadolu Agency.
More than 500,000 of them live in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, he added. The Turkish interior minister said migration management offices would be set up at the Turkish embassy in Damascus and the Turkish consulate in Aleppo to facilitate procedures for the return of refugees to Syria.
The Turkish authorities, who are hoping for a large number of refugees to return to Syria to ease strong anti-Syrian sentiment among the population, will also allow one member of each refugee family to travel to Syria and return to Turkey three times in the first half of 2025 to prepare for the return of their relatives to Syria.
The Syrian refugees will also be able to take their cars with them, which was not possible for them until now, Yerlikaya added.