Safe zone in north Syria to ensure Syrians' return home

With the establishment of a safe zone in northern Syria with the aim of getting rid of the YPG/PKK terror group in the region, Turkey hopes to resettle a portion of the displaced Syrians currently living in the country, Anadolu reports.

Turkish military officials and their US counterparts last Wednesday discussed details of the planned safe zone, saying that both parties agreed on turning the area into a “peace corridor” and that measures would be taken to ensure the return of Syrians forced out of their country by violence.

Since the eruption of a bloody civil war in Syria in 2011, millions of people had to flee their war-torn country. A total of 3.6 million Syrian people currently live in Turkey, with many looking forward to returning to their homeland.

Mohammad al-Saadi, 42, described how he longed for his homeland to Anadolu Agency.

“It has been over four years since we moved here [Ankara, Turkey] with my family. We are provided many opportunities, but we long for our homeland,” he said.

Saadi said he used to live in the northwestern Syrian town of Idlib, but that he had to abandon it because of regular airstrikes by the regime and Russian jets.

“You cannot imagine how difficult it is to sleep while you are listening to the sonic booms of fighter jets, explosions and gunfire,” he said, adding that almost all Syrian citizens living in opposition-controlled regions suffered psychological disorders due to the never-ending war campaign of the regime and its allies.

When asked if he would consider returning to Syria once a safe zone was established in the northern region of the country, he replied: “It is not just me, there are at least a dozen [people] I know who would immediately return if that was the case. It [northern Syria] might not be my hometown, but it is part of my country.”

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Another Syrian in Turkey, Omar al-Maher said he used to work as a mechanic in Homs city until 2014. However, he was forced to abandon his home for Idlib after clashes between opposition forces and the regime broke out, before later coming to Turkey.

“One cannot describe how it feels to live under constant threat of death. We used to lead a modest life before [civil war], however, everything changed in the coming years,” he lamented. “I even miss the difficult workdays I used to complain about all day long.”

“My family and I would return home, it does not matter whether it is north or south [of Syria] if we had a chance. Turks have been good to us, that is a fact. However, I don’t want to be foreigner anywhere, Turkey or Europe. We just want to return, it is so difficult to be away from your homeland,” he said.

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A Syrian woman aged 29, who spoke on condition of anonymity, claimed many of the people taking shelter in Turkey would return to their homeland once the territory was cleared of terrorist elements and Syrians’ security was guaranteed.

“There are people [terror groups] with ill intentions, they must leave first so that we can lead a normal life. Nobody would like to live in a place where bullets could target you any second,” she said.

“All I want is to lead a normal life in my country, and raise my children without thinking about their security while they are out playing football,” she said. “It is one’s right to live without fear, I am a human being, is it too much to ask for a normal life?”

Vanessa Tinker, an academic at the Social Sciences University of Ankara, argued that displaced Syrians could face initial difficulty while adapting to the region and that their security must be ensured to ease this process.

“Setting aside the living conditions, ongoing security threats are more troubling. Despite the agreement between Turkey and the US Wednesday to create a ‘safe zone’, there has been no information about what this deal would consist of,” said Tinker, an expert in conflict resolution.

She added that the relocation of Syrians in Turkey to northern Syria following an imminent operation should be meticulously arranged as a collision — between Kurdish and Arab populations — might trigger civilian unrest in the region.

According to the UN, over 5.6 million have fled Syria since the eruption of the civil war in 2011. Among the countries hosting Syrians, Turkey has welcomed the most with 3.6 of them within its borders. Other major host countries are Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Egypt, in the sequence of the amount of Syrians hosted.

Bashar Al-Assad’schizophrenia: asking refugees to come back to Syria but at the same time keeps planning chemical attacks – Cartoon [Mohammad Sabaaneh/Middle East Monitor]