ISTANBUL: More than 25,000 Syrians have returned home from Turkiye since Bashar Assad was overthrown by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham militants, Turkiye’s interior minister said Tuesday.
Turkiye is home to nearly three million refugees who fled the civil war that broke out in 2011, and whose presence has been an issue for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.
“The number of people returning to Syria in the last 15 days has exceeded 25,000,” Ali Yerlikaya told the official Anadolu news agency.
Ankara is in close touch with Syria’s new leaders and now focussing on the voluntary return of Syrian refugees, hoping the shift in power in Damascus will allow many of them to return home.
Yerlikaya said a migration office would be established in the Turkish embassy and consulate in Damascus and Aleppo so that the records of returning Syrians could be kept.
Turkiye reopened its embassy in Damascus, nearly a week after Assad was toppled by forces backed by Ankara, and 12 years after the diplomatic outpost was shuttered early in Syria’s civil war.
Turkiye says over 25,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
https://arab.news/4h8cx
Turkiye says over 25,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
- Ankara is in close touch with Syria’s new leaders and now focussing on the voluntary return of Syrian refugees
Israel defense minister vows to stay in Gaza, establish outposts
- His remarks, reported across Israeli media, come as a fragile US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas holds in Gaza
JERUSALEM: Defense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday vowed Israel will remain in Gaza and pledged to establish outposts in the north of the Palestinian territory, according to a video of a speech published by Israeli media.
His remarks, reported across Israeli media, come as a fragile US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas holds in Gaza.
Mediators are pressing for the implementation of the next phases of the truce, which would involve an Israeli withdrawal from the territory.
Speaking at an event in the Israeli settlement of Beit El in the occupied West Bank, Katz said: “We are deep inside Gaza, and we will never leave Gaza — there will be no such thing.”
“We are there to protect, to prevent what happened (from happening again),” he added, according to a video published by Israeli news site Ynet.
Katz also vowed to establish outposts in the north of Gaza in place of settlements that had been evacuated during Israel’s unilateral disengagement from the territory in 2005.
“When the time comes, God willing, we will establish in northern Gaza, Nahal outposts in place of the communities that were uprooted,” Katz said, referring to military-agricultural settlements set up by Israeli soldiers.
“We will do this in the right way and at the appropriate time.”
Katz’s remarks were slammed by former minister and chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, who accused the government of “acting against the broad national consensus, during a critical period for Israel’s national security.”
“While the government votes with one hand in favor of the Trump plan, with the other hand it sells fables about isolated settlement nuclei in the (Gaza) Strip,” he wrote on X, referring to the Gaza peace plan brokered by US President Donald Trump.
The next phases of Trump’s plan would involve an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the establishment of an interim authority to govern the territory in place of Hamas and the deployment of an international stabilization force.
It also envisages the demilitarization of Gaza, including the disarmament of Hamas, which the group has refused.
On Thursday, several Israelis entered the Gaza Strip in defiance of army orders and held a symbolic flag-raising ceremony to call for the reoccupation and resettlement of the Palestinian territory.
