Around 40,000 Syrians who took shelter in Türkiye amid the civil war in their country have returned home since the Feb. 6 earthquakes, Turkish and Syrian officials said.
Türkiye eased restrictions on the movements of Syrian refugees following what it called the "disaster of the century."
The immigration was recorded at four border crossings held by the Syrian opposition, Mazen Alloush, a media officer at the opposition-held Bab Al-Hawa border crossing with Türkiye, told Reuters.
As of Monday, some 13,500 had crossed through Bab al-Hawa, nearly 10,000 through Jarablus crossing and around 7,000 each through the Bab al-Salam and Tal Abiad crossings, according to a table of statistics Alloush provided.
A Turkish Defense Ministry official confirmed that the number of Syrians who had returned to their country reached 40,000 as of Monday. More Syrians were returning and the number was increasing daily, the official added.
Restrictions put in place by Türkiye in April last year, just before Ramadan Bayram, also known as Eid al-Fitr, had banned Syrians with temporary protection permits from making round trips to Syria to promote one-way returns. Türkiye hosts some 3.5 million Syrian refugees.
In the quake's aftermath, Syrians have taken advantage of an offer from Turkish authorities to spend up to six months in the northwest without losing the chance to return. Many have gone back to check on relatives following the temblor that killed over 44,000 people in Türkiye and around 6,000 in Syria, most of them in the country's opposition-held northwest, according to the U.N. Others have temporarily moved in with relatives after their homes and businesses in Türkiye were destroyed in the quake.
"The plan is to go see our relatives and get out of this difficult atmosphere here," said Khaled al-Ahmed, a Syrian laborer in his mid-50s who had been living in Kahramanmaraş, one of the worst-hit areas. He and his 10 children were waiting to proceed past the Turkish side of the Bab al-Hawa crossing at the weekend, the first time they would return to Syria since leaving as refugees eight years earlier.
His home had been heavily damaged and work stopped, he said. "People are going without knowing where they are heading, they just want to get out of here for now," he said, adding he would seek to return to Türkiye in one or two months.
Around 4 million people live in northwest Syria, with most of them dependent on aid even before the latest disaster, according to the U.N.
