More than 30,000 Syrian refugees have crossed the Turkish border to return to their country in the past 17 days, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said today.

“The number of people who left for (Syria) in 17 days is 30,663. This flow will not stop,” the minister told the private Turkish channel TGRT.

An earlier figure released by Turkish authorities spoke of “more than 25,000” Syrians repatriated from Turkey in the two weeks since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime.

“Our consulate general will open in Aleppo in a few days. (…) We are opening an immigration management office. Children have been born here, there have been marriages, divorces, deaths. We are taking measures to meet their needs,” the minister said.

Turkey, which shares a border of more than 900 kilometers with Syria, continues to welcome on its territory some 2.92 million Syrians who have fled the war that has devastated their country since 2011.

Turkish authorities, hoping for the return of large groups of refugees to Syria to mitigate strong anti-Syrian sentiment in the population, will also allow one member of each refugee family to travel to Syria and return three times by July 1, 2025 to prepare for resettlement.