After the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the return of Syrian refugees to Türkiye

The end of the wait is there, at the end of this bend between two stone hills. With his eyes fixed on this horizon, Hassan Abdoulatif awaits concrete proof of the fall of Bashar al-Assad. The deposed dictator fled to Russia on December 8 and the Syrian flag is now that of the revolution. But, in the eyes of the young man from Homs, all this will only have real meaning when his mother, a refugee in Türkiye, returns home. « She tired to send us enough to live on, he says. It's time for her to enjoy her family now. »

The end of a reign in an authoritarian country can be measured by the number of buses of exiles crossing its borders. At the Bab al-Hawa post in northwest Syria, a horn sounds every twenty minutes. This is the signal announcing that a group of refugees, or rather Syrians recently relieved of this denomination which has stuck to their skin for thirteen years…