« Allah is great! », repeats in chorus the crowd gathered on the wasteland of the predominantly Syrian district of Önder, in the district of Altindag, in the northern suburbs of Ankara. With their palms open in a posture of contemplation, nearly five hundred people participate in collective prayer on this historic day. “ Long live the solidarity of the Umma », We can read on a large banner which dominates the demonstrators.
It’s been ten days since all the Syrians in Türkiye kept their eyes glued to their phone screens and held their breath. After a dazzling offensive, the armed group HTS (Hayat al Tahrir al Sham, from Al-Qaeda) and its allies from the Free Syrian Army (Islamist rebels from the north, supported by Turkey, Editor’s note) took the Syrian capital , Damascus.
Manifestations of joy
The announcement of the fall of the bloodthirsty Bashar Al Assad on the night of December 7 to 8 triggered demonstrations of joy in all the major cities of Turkey, Syria’s large northern neighbor which hosts more than 3 million Syrian refugees. The one whom the Arab Spring had failed to bring down since 2011, finally fled to Moscow.
In Altindag, cars tirelessly circle around happily honking their horns. Children allowed to sit on the edge of windows, wave the Syrian flag of the revolution. On some, the face of Abdel Basset Sarout, a former Syrian footballer, who became a hero of the resistance after being martyred against the regime in 2019, can be seen.
Return to Syria
On a sidewalk near the shops, a round improvises to the rhythm of darbukas and daily (small wind instrument). A dozen men exult and perform traditional dance steps, huddled together. The party has been in full swing for hours already, and the excitement doesn’t seem ready to die down.
The face of Nur, 18, beams. “ What liberation! Assad has fallen! » she rejoices. Originally from the city of Homs, she and her family fled the civil war 9 years ago. Schooled upon her arrival, she speaks Turkish without an accent and has just started higher studies in pharmacy. “ Of course I want to go back to Syria! As soon as I graduate, I’m going back to Homs.” she says, enthusiastically.
Among the Syrians celebrating in Altindag, the majority say without hesitation that they want to return to their country as soon as possible. Because terror reigned among the Syrian community in Türkiye in recent years. Cases of forced returns to the border, administratively disguised by the police under the term “voluntary return”, had multiplied. Regularly, the authorities gave figures on the number of returns, as a guarantee to the section of the population sensitive to this issue.
The culture of welcome and Muslim brotherhood will in fact only last for a while. Syrian refugees have gradually become easy scapegoats for a society undermined by the economic crisis. A discontent that the main opposition party of the CHP (Republican People’s Party (CHP) had continued to exploit.
Restoring a bloodless country
The period between the two rounds of the presidential election in May 2023 gave rise to a spectacular outbreak of xenophobic slogans from the CHP, which had indulged in one-upmanship in the hope of attracting the nationalist vote, released winner of the polls in the first round. “ We will send the refugees home »: this phrase, which had become a quasi-mantra, ended up being taken up by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself.
He could not have dreamed of a better scenario to resolve the Syrian refugee issue. The coming weeks, however, risk seeing the most bravado disillusioned. The modalities of the political transition in Syria are still unclear and the type of governance that the very conservative HTS organization will establish remains unknown for the moment.
« People not only fled because of the Assad regime, they also fled the country’s instability.” would like to recall the specialist in migration issues, Murat Erdoğan, in an interview with the T24 information site. “We need to rebuild the country’s economy, and that will take at least ten years” affirms the cautious researcher, who calls for a mobilization of the countries of the European Union to help restore a bloodless Syria.