At border gates in southern Turkey this week, long lines formed as Syrians — mostly young men — prepared to return to a country rocked by nearly 14 years of civil war. Aerial photos showed highways jammed as cars drove toward the capital of Damascus, newly freed of Syria’s longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad.
In Gaziantep, a Turkish city near the Syrian border where thousands of refugees have made their homes, the joy was palpable.
“I feel proud. It’s like our nation came back for us,” said Yousuf Rahhal, originally a lawyer from Syria’s Idlib province who runs a shop selling housewares in central Gaziantep.
Under a glass table by the register, he sells small keychains of the new Syrian flag: green, white and black.
“For us, this is the sign of freedom,” he said proudly, through an interpreter.
But when he reflected on the past decade, his eyes betrayed a pain he could hardly put into words: “Unfortunately, the Syrian people paid a very heavy bill.”
At least 617,910 people have been killed in Syria’s civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent organization based in Britain. Countless others disappeared into the regime’s notorious prison system. Thousands more died trying to reach safety abroad. But now, with the recent turn of events, many Syrians are searching for their loved ones. Others who have lived in Turkey for years are eager to return. But still others say that the evolving security situation and financial concerns are giving them pause.
In the early days of the war, Rahhal coordinated ambulances for the Syrian American Medical Society, rescuing civilians from buildings bombed by the Assad regime. After the siege of Aleppo ended with the city falling under regime control in 2016, Rahhal fled across the border, joining the 3.6 million Syrians who made Turkey their home.
After 2018, the Turkish economy took a nosedive — and many, both in government and the public, turned their anger toward refugees. Registering for legal residency, getting permission to travel between provinces, and signing children up for school became more difficult under Turkey’s rules for temporary protection. The Turkish government stepped up deportations, setting up checkpoints and stopping people in public to ask for their papers.
Rahhal summed up those years with one word: miserable.
“Many Syrians suffered from financial pressures, and mental ones,” Rahhal said. “But despite the pressures, [Turkey] is the one who took us in — and that’s something we didn’t have in other places.”
An estimated 3 million Syrians remain in Turkey, a number that once made Turkey the host of the largest number of refugees in the world. Many, like Rahhal, are now weighing a return to Syria, but remain wary of an evolving security situation.
Israel has continued airstrikes and seized territory beyond a demilitarized buffer zone in Golan Heights. Forces backed by Turkey have occupied large sections of northern Syria, while Kurdish militants control the northeast.
As someone who joined the opposition with hopes of representative democracy in a unified Syria, Rahhal said that he now feels like an outsider in his own country.
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that has taken control, first emerged as an affiliate of al-Qaeda, and may have different visions for the country. Additionally, many former regime supporters remain in Syria, and now, everyone will have to figure out how to live together.
“My brother was reported [to police] by someone who was my neighbor. How can I live next to someone without having justice?” Rahhal said. “We don’t want to take this justice with our own hands — we need a system that can take our rights back.”
Others hope to return to Syria quickly, to look for clues about the fate of loved ones lost in Assad’s prisons.
Bashir from Aleppo, who asked not to use his full name, sells oranges and pomegranates off a cart in Gaziantep for the equivalent of 30 cents a pound. He said that dozens of his relatives disappeared into the regime’s prisons.
“We’re a big family, and we had a lot of [relatives] who were detained. Almost 100 members of our family,” he explained through an interpreter. “So far, we’ve already had news of two of them on the lists, but we haven’t found them yet.”
By appearing on the regime’s lists, which have recently been made available, Bashir’s family can confirm that those two family members were incarcerated. But they still don’t know if they’re still alive. His relatives must now join the masses of people combing the newly opened prisons independently, searching for the bodies of their loved ones.
For other Syrian families in Turkey, concerns are largely economic.
Mirashed Jasim said she’s hoping to return to Aleppo, her hometown. But after years of displacement, she said, it’s unclear how she can afford it.
“We spent 13 years here, waiting — of course, I’m happy that it’s liberated and that we have a chance to go back,” she said. “But we don’t have anything, we don’t have any savings.”
She and her husband paused to speak with journalists while walking to a money-transfer service to send funds to their daughters in Syria. For the couple, leaving Turkey could mean losing status as a refugee, and a legal right to live here, she said, adding, “It’s like going back to zero.”
Many people are in the same position, having lost so much to the war.
“My grandchildren deserve to have a country,” said Hayfaa qal-Hawasly, a housewife from Aleppo. “They deserve to have dignity, to not worry about what to say if someone asks where they’re from.”
Hawasly and her husband, AbdulRazzak Hawasly, live in Gaziantep with two of their grandchildren. She burst into tears, recounting the times the children have returned home from school after being bullied over their nationality.
Though she said that she feels torn about returning to Syria, the family hopes to move back by Ramadan in March. Her husband participated in the early days of the revolution before moving his business selling water and air-filtration systems to Gaziantep.
AbdulRazzak Hawasly said that he’s ready to return as soon as possible to participate in the shaping of a new Syria — and he has faith that HTS is capable of creating a democratic government.
“If you have stability, justice, and security in Syria — that’s enough of a basis to reach democracy,” he said. “We just need one chance to build the Syria we believe in.”
Ibrahim Jawdat provided interpretation from Arabic.
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