Thousands of Syrian refugees in Turkey lined up at border crossings on Wednesday in hopes of returning home temporarily after Syrian border officials announced that Turkey had agreed to let the refugees leave and return later while it copes with a disastrous earthquake.
Many of those crossing at three border posts were carrying suitcases, plastic bags and potato sacks holding whatever personal belongings they had been able to salvage from destroyed homes. Most of their faces didn’t reflect enthusiasm: They were leaving one disaster zone for another.
The Syrian administration of Bab al-Hawa, one of the main border crossings from Turkey into an opposition-held territory in northwestern Syria, announced via social media that Turkey would allow refugees living in the earthquake zone to return to their homeland for three to six months and then come back to Turkey.
Turkish officials could not immediately be reached for comment. But if confirmed, this would be a policy shift by Turkey, albeit under extraordinary circumstances. Turkey hosts about 3.7 million Syrians and has tightly controlled the border for years to prevent more refugees from coming in.
Most of the Syrians who have returned home in the past few years for brief visits risked not being allowed back into Turkey.
“We have no other choice but to go to Syria,” Younis al-Saeed, a 29-year-old father of two, said as he stood in the line on the Turkish side of Bab al-Hawa, waiting to cross. “But of course there is a fear that Turkey won’t allow us to return. We can’t guarantee it.”
Mazen Alloush, a spokesman for the Syrian side of the Bab al-Hawa crossing, said there were about 1.7 million Syrians living in the Turkish areas devastated by the earthquake, which killed more than 40,000 people in Turkey and Syria and left millions homeless in the two countries.
Syria has been carved up into different zones of control during a 12-year civil war that has still not ended. The Bab al-Hawa crossing is administered by a Syrian opposition group that controls part of the country’s northwest.
Mr. Alloush said that over the past few days, the local government linked to that opposition group had met with Turkish officials. Turkey decided to allow Syrians to go home temporarily, then return later, as it recovers and rebuilds, Mr. Alloush said.
He added that he expected about 3,000 Syrians to cross through the Bab al-Hawa a day and that more would go through other border crossings. At least two other border crossings were also being used by refugees to return to Syria.
Last May, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey announced a significant expansion of his country’s plan to entice Syrian refugees back to their homeland by building homes for them in Syria near the Turkish border.
He made the announcement amid an acute economic crisis in Turkey that has since deepened and fueled widespread anger toward the large number of refugees in Turkey, including Syrians and Afghans.
While the death toll and destruction has been greater in Turkey, the epicenter of the quake, the temblor also cut a path of destruction across a large swath of northwestern Syria, including areas under the control of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other under the anti-government opposition.
Those returning to Syria on Wednesday found a country still bearing the scars of war as well as the familiar pancaked roofs and buildings turned to rubble that they witnessed in Turkey. Syrians left homeless by the earthquake in Syria are struggling to find a place to live as the region suffers from an acute shortage of tents and temporary housing.
About 40,000 families have been left homeless, but these are rough estimates, said Muneer Mustafa, the deputy chief of the White Helmets, a rescue group in the opposition territory of northwestern Syria.
The border crossings have also been used for more than 100 United Nations aid trucks that have been sent to northwestern Syria since the quake as well as returning more than 1,400 bodies of Syrians who died in the earthquake in Turkey to be buried in their homeland.
In the Turkish village of Reyhanli, Firyal Falaha said her home and her son’s were at risk of collapsing any minute. The walls and pillars are all cracked. The earthquake felt like “Judgment Day,” she said.
“My home in Syria is also damaged, but no matter what living there is still better,” said Ms. Falaha, 50, explaining that her home had been hit by a rocket during the war.
For now, she is returning to that home in the town of Binnish in opposition-held Idlib Province along with her daughter and four grandchildren. They plan to return to Turkey in a few months, primarily for the children’s education. They have been in Turkish schools their entire lives and would struggle to adjust to Syrian schools, with a different language and curriculum, she said.
Some of the refugees leaving this week said they planned to spend a few months in Syria until Turkey emerged from its state of emergency and made cities and towns inhabitable again. But others said they had no intention of returning to Turkey: They said they had come to Turkey years ago to flee war and destruction in Syria, but with parts of Turkey now in a state of destruction, they might as well return home.
“We are going back because we no longer have a place to shelter here,” said Mohammad Mohammad, 40, who was lined up with his wife and two young children. They carried with them a potato sack stuffed with clothes.
Neighbors had pulled the family members out of the rubble of their collapsed home in the southern Turkish city of Antakya hours after the earthquake struck. Mr. Mohammad had a fractured leg but said that he had struggled to find a hospital that would treat a minor injury given the overall scale of others’ wounds.
With no place to live, they had gone to a nearby town, but he said that they had been refused a tent for three days because priority was being given to Turkish people. He said he had also heard from friends trying to rent homes elsewhere in southern Turkey that landlords were seeking unaffordable rents.
The family plans to stay with relatives in northwestern Syria and then return to Turkey in a few months, Mr. Mohammad said.
“At least in Syria there are tents and we have family and friends,” he said. “People will help us.”
Nicole Tung contributed reporting.
