Syria quake: What next for victims who returned home?

In the 10 days immediately following the massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake, which hit northwestern Syria and southern Turkey, Ahmed and his family were forced to live on the street in the southeastern Turkish town of Adiyaman. But finally, after years of trying to make a life for himself and his family in his adopted homeland, Ahmed decided he had no other option but to return to his country of birth, Syria. “In Turkey I had nothing left. But at least here I have some friends and relatives,” he explained, speaking from a friend’s home inside the opposition-controlled areas of northern Syria. Due to security concerns, Ahmed did not wish to give his exact location, too many details about his life or his full name.

The former factory worker fled war in his own country several years ago. But after the devastating earthquake hit the Turkish-Syrian border region on February 6, the house Ahmed was living in was damaged beyond repair, as was the business where he had been working. Straight after the earthquake, he says his family was unable to get a government-issued tent to live in — Ahmed firmly believes this is because the Turkish had a discriminatory locals-first policy when it came to dispensing aid.

“The day after the earthquake, anybody who still had a house standing also began charging double the rent,” said Ahmed, who did not receive his last salary and who had to borrow money to make the journey into Syria. “A place that was 4,000 lira [$212, prior to the earthquake] a month now costs 8,000 lira a month,” he complained. “And there’s also discrimination. It’s almost impossible for a Syrian to rent a place now.”

That was when he and his family decided to return to the war-torn country they had previously fled.

“Right now, I don’t know what will happen,” Ahmed added. “If we could get a tent or a shelter here, then we would probably just stay. Maybe I would settle here. But right now, I just don’t know.”

The same uncertainty is something thousands of other Syrians are also facing. By Tuesday this week, almost 10,000 Syrians had passed through the Turkish-Syrian border crossing, Bab al-Hawa. Observers suspect that as many as 20,000 Syrians may have gone back altogether already, if other border crossings and methods of travel are also taken into account.

The hardest hit Turkish cities were home to a large number of Syrians, said Fadel Abdul Ghany, head of the UK-based Syrian Network for Human Rights, or SNHR, which monitors human rights violations inside Syria.

Both the badly battered provinces of Hatay and Gaziantep in Turkey had just under half a million Syrian inhabitants each, he pointed out. “That means a lot of the dead in these cities will be Syrians and a lot of the damage will be impacting Syrians,” Abdul Ghany explained. “Many of them will have lost everything: Families, property, jobs. It was already a struggle for many of them before. It’s going to be even harder to rebuild again.”

Some are now returning to Syria to check on their own families after the earthquake, others will be going to mourn with relatives, Abdul Ghany noted.

Turkey has ratified international refugee conventions but defines refugees only as those people coming as a result of “events occurring in Europe.” This means it does not recognize the around 4 million Syrians in the country as refugees. The country does give them what it calls “temporary protection” status though, which comes with a residence permit, access to some social welfare and public services, and an identification card.