A picture taken from Mount Qasioun shows the sun rising as a thick fog covers Damascus on December 25, 2024. Agence France-Presse

Sitting at wooden benches, men and women stack tobacco leaves in one hand –- the components must be dry but soft, like the velvety texture of leather.

ANKARA — Nearly 31,000 Syrians have returned home since the fall of strongman Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s interior minister said Friday, the figure rising by about 5,000 in just three days.

“The number of people who went back is 30,663,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya told TGRT news channel, saying “30 percent” of them had been born in Turkey.

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Turkey is home to nearly three million refugees who fled Syria after the start of the civil war in 2011, with the fall of Bashar al-Assad raising hopes many would go back.

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READ: Syrians rejoice as Assad flees, ending brutal reign

On Tuesday, Yerlikaya said more than 25,000 Syrians had returned in remarks to state news agency Anadolou, saying they would be allowed to leave and re-enter Turkey three times in the first half of 2025.

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Ankara would also open “a migration management office” in Aleppo, Syria’s second city, where most of the refugees living in Turkey are from, he said Friday, without giving further details.

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Turkey was also to reopen its consulate general in Aleppo “in a few days”, he added, echoing remarks earlier this week by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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READ: Ousted Syrian leader Assad flees to Moscow after fall of Damascus

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Turkey’s Damascus embassy reopened on December 14, six days after Assad was toppled by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels.

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Although Ankara had no direct link to the offensive, it has long had a working relationship with HTS, becoming the first nation to reopen its mission there.

The embassy had closed on March 26, 2012, a year after Syria’s civil war began.

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