Turkey cautions may be too soon to expect mass refugee returns to Aleppo

Turkey said Wednesday it expects many of the three million Syrian refugees currently on its soil to speed up their returns if opposition forces hold the city of Aleppo, which last week they prized from Damascus’ control.

But a government minister cautioned the time may not yet be ripe for large scale population movements to Aleppo.

“We know those from Aleppo love Aleppo very much. We meet them and they are extremely enthusiastic,” said Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya.

“But to those who say they wish to go back now we say, ‘wait, it’s not safe for the moment’,” said Yerlikaya.

“Everyone hopes to return to his homeland as soon as they see or detect peace and security,” he added, noting that 42 percent of Syrians — amounting to 1.25 million people — now living in Turkey hail from the Aleppo region.

“There will be strong interest” in a return, a burning issue in Turkey, he predicted after opposition forces last week took over Aleppo, Syria’s second city, which in more than a decade of war had never fallen out of government hands.

Some 880,000 Syrians have taken refuge in the Turkish provinces of Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Hatay which border Syria.

Another 500,000 are registered in Istanbul according to official statistics.

Turkey, whose army occupies areas of northern Syria as it pursues its actions against Kurdish fighters, says some 110,000 Syrians have already returned home since the start of this year to a homeland which has endured 13 years of unrest.

Experts, however, do not expect to see a large wave of further returns as some of the refugees have spent more than a decade in Turkey and around 1.5 million of them are minors who have had most if not all of their education in their host country.

“It is winter and so people will not want to return in the coming three or four months to destroyed homes and, moreover, to destroyed education and health systems,” one humanitarian worker in Turkey said, while conceding some may return at least temporarily to monitor the situation in Aleppo.