Türkiye vowed on Sunday to complete the construction of 100,000 houses in war-torn Syria, as Ankara pushes ahead of the 2023 elections to resettle Syrian refugees who fled more than a decade of fighting.
Speaking during a visit to open 600 homes in Syria's opposition-held Idlib region, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu highlighted that about 75,000 houses had been constructed in the past two years. "We will complete 100,000 ... houses by the end of the year," Soylu added.
The ceremony took place at the newly built settlement made up of rows of brick bungalows at Mashhad Ruhin, which lies close to the Turkish border.
Meanwhile, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently said that he wanted to encourage 1 million of the country's 3.7 million Syrian refugees to return home by building them housing and providing basic infrastructure. Ahead of Türkiye's presidential elections next year, refugees have become a thorny political issue, especially with Ankara mired in an economic crisis.
Syria's civil began in 2011 with the regime's brutal repression of mostly peaceful protesters, and millions have been forced to flee, now displaced internally and abroad. Ankara and the opposition forces it supports have seized swathes of territory along the Syrian border during several military operations since 2016.
Türkiye says it wants to create a "safe zone" along its border to stop Syrians displaced by war from crossing and to send back some of the millions who have crossed already. Erdoğan said more than half a million Syrians who had fled to Türkiye have returned home to these safe zones.
Over 500 families now live in the newly opened settlement at Mashhar Ruhin, with 100 more due to arrive in the coming days, the latest in a series of Ankara-sponsored housing projects.
Hadiya Al-Taha, 70, used to live in a tent with her daughter after fleeing the fighting in southern Idlib four years ago. "Residential blocks are better than tents, you can't even compare the two," she said, as she moved her meager possessions of mattresses, blankets and some household utensils to the house.
But she still misses her original home and farm.
"Our village house was the best," she sighed.
When the Syrian civil war began, Türkiye opened its doors to those who had to flee the country to save their lives and now hosts more refugees than any other country in the world. Ankara also spearheads humanitarian aid efforts for Syrians in opposition-controlled parts of northern Syria and in Türkiye while making large investments for Syrians in Türkiye in social cohesion policies to help them integrate into society smoothly.
Within the scope of improving the region's social infrastructure, several nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) provided people with food and clothing while roads and buildings were rebuilt. These efforts paid off as hundreds of displaced Syrians finally returned to the liberated areas.
While Ankara faces calls from opposition parties for the return of all Syrian refugees to their home country, Erdoğan promised that Türkiye will “never hand them over to the enemy at gunpoint.” Those who fled persecution and war in Iraq, Syria or elsewhere and sought protection in our country are guests, Erdoğan said.
If they want to return voluntarily, they can return, otherwise, our doors will remain open to the refugees, he added.
