Erdogan plans to repatriate one million refugees to northern parts of Syria

Turkey will encourage the return of one million Syrian refugees to areas dominated by the Turkish armed forces in northern Syria, offering them infrastructure to rebuild their lives, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised on Tuesday.

"We are preparing a project to ensure the voluntary return of one million of our Syrian brothers and sisters that we are now taking in," he said in a video message broadcast by the Turkish public broadcaster TRT.

Erdogan said the returnees would settle in 13 districts in Azaz, Al Bab and Jarablus, north and northeast of Aleppo, as well as in Ras al Ain and Tel Abiad, east of the Euphrates, "in cooperation with the local assemblies".

All these regions are under the control of the Turkish armed forces or local militias allied with Ankara.

Erdogan promised to provide returnees with concrete brick houses, schools, hospitals and even agricultural machinery to rebuild their lives in Syria.

The president made the remarks at a ceremony to hand over the keys to 57,000 houses built by Turkey for Syrian families in the Idlib area, southwest of Aleppo, still partly under the control of Islamist militias.

He added that since the start of the Turkish military operation in northern Syria in 2016, some 500,000 Syrians had voluntarily returned to their country.

The number of Syrian refugees in Turkey has risen steadily to 3.62 million in 2018 and has been relatively stable since then, at 3.76 million currently, according to Turkish Interior Ministry data.

The opposition claims that Erdogan will try to encourage a conspicuous return of Syrians shortly before the 2023 elections in order to win votes among those who see the presence of refugees as a burden for the country, which is burdened by a serious economic crisis.