Turkey forbids Syrians from “holiday leave” to home
IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – Turkey’s Interior Minister, Süleyman Soylu, said on Friday that the Turkish government would not allow Syrian refugees to visit their families in Syria for Eid al-Fitr.
“As of last week, we told our governors not to give (Syrians) holiday leave,” speaking during a live program on NTV, the Interior Minister said.
“They can go to the safe zones and stay there. Those who want to go for the holiday and then return won’t be allowed to,” Soylu added.
He noted that the refugees also had not been allowed to go home for the past two or three religious holidays as part of measures against the COVID-19 pandemic, and that about 60 percent of those who’d gone there remained.
In early March, Savaş Ünlü, the head of Turkey’s Directorate General of Migration Management, claimed that around 500,000 Syrians had voluntarily returned to their country.
In a post on Facebook, the Bab al-Salama crossing management announced that the number of visitors who entered Syria had reached 2,123 during in the four days prior to Turkey’s announcement.
Last Thursday, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, has announced that Turkey, together with four countries, had started “a project to repatriate Syrians in the next period of time.”
Speaking of Syrian refugees in Turkey, 3,710,000 of them are registered in Turkey under the Temporary Protection Card (kimlik), while 1,207.000 others hold residence and study permit, according to a survey published by the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs in mid-September 2021.