It took a decade in Lebanon for Fady* and his brother Mohannad* to build up their lives, longing to return to their home in the Syrian countryside but accepting they would not be safe if they did. Both found jobs repairing air-conditioning systems, got married and started families. They had grown used to being questioned by police, but having never had any legal problems, they believed they were safe.
After Mohannad, 39, was arrested in April during a raid on a refugee camp, Fady was not too worried at first. “We thought it would be just like every other time: they would ask him questions, he would answer them, and they would send him back,” he says.
When Fady learned a week later that Mohannad had been deported to Syria, drafted into the military and sent to the frontline of the civil war near the northern city of Aleppo, he was shocked. “In that moment, I felt helpless,” he says.
An estimated 5.5 million Syrians fled to neighbouring countries, including Turkey and Lebanon, after the outbreak of civil war in 2011 as well as attacks on civilians by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
More than a decade later, a small enclave in Idlib province in north-west Syria marks the extent of rebel control, while Turkish-allied opposition militias control other areas in the north. Russian and Iranian forces, as well as Lebanese militias, remain active, providing support to Assad's fractured control of the country.
The UN estimates that 51,300 refugees were returned, either forcibly or voluntarily, last year. For those who return to areas under government control, the risk of abuses including torture and enforced disappearance are high. Turkish authorities say they seek to return refugees to areas either under Turkish control or to the area controlled by the rebel-led Syrian Salvation Government, the political arm of the militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, which has been accused of rights violations.
A recent EU-led conference in Brussels raised €5.6bn (£4.8bn) to support Syrian refugees, a fall from last year’s donations. Nourhan Abdelaziz, of Save the Children, described it as “simply not enough”.
Fady and his brother belong to the estimated 5.4 million Syrian refugees living in Lebanon and Turkey, neighbouring countries that had provided a haven for Syrians fleeing persecution and a civil war that grew from a popular uprising in 2011 against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.
The UN estimates that at least 306,000 people were killed in the first 10 years of the conflict in Syria, not including the 100,000 people thought by human rights groups to have been forcibly disappeared into detention centres and subjected to torture.
Lebanon, where Syrian refugees make up a quarter of the tiny country’s population, has long had an uneasy relationship as a haven for those fleeing the conflict on its doorstep, tacitly accepting the influx of Syrians while seeking to discourage them from staying.
In contrast, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, unilaterally granted millions of Syrians temporary protection in Turkey in 2014, offering them safety and accusing Assad of “state terrorism”.
Now, both countries have moved to expel refugees amid efforts in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and elsewhere across the Middle East to restore diplomatic relations with Damascus to where they were prior to 2011.
It is part of a shift in attitudes to the Assad regime across the entire region. Last month Syria was readmitted to the Arab League after being suspended for a decade; Assad was given a warm welcome at the last meeting in Saudi Arabia, which is reopening its embassy in Damascus.
In Lebanon, ministers said last March that they would begin deporting the 1.5 million Syrians in the country, aiming to remove 15,000 people every month. In Turkey, Erdoğan vowed to return 1 million of the estimated 3.6 million Syrians during an acceptance speech after a recent election victory – a nod to an upsurge in nationalist and anti-refugee sentiment.
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For Saeed* and his sons, it was paradoxically the devastating earthquakes that shook south-east Turkey and northern Syria in February, killing an estimated 60,000 people, that saved them from deportation. They had been accused of violence towards another Syrian man after a financial dispute.
Inside an immigration detention centre in Istanbul, Saeed, who had lived in Turkey for almost a decade, realised he was unlikely to be set free, even though police had questioned him and found him innocent after he provided proof that they were nowhere near the alleged crime scene.
“All my papers were correct; I wasn’t living here illegally. I’m registered as living in Istanbul, my kids are studying at Turkish universities, I pay taxes and I have my own business. I thought everything was set,” he says, speaking from his office in a school where Syrians learn Turkish.
“It seems like any Syrian taken to a police station, whether they’re at fault or not, is immediately sent to be deported,” he says. He says the police told him they were obliged to send his family along with their accuser to an immigration detention centre on the other side of Istanbul as they were foreign nationals.
They were moved through three detention centres before ending up at a facility near the Syrian border in the southern province of Hatay.
“When you arrive they present you with two options: sign your voluntary deportation form or stay in the centre indefinitely,” he says. Any return to Syria would be forced on them, he says, due to conditions in the war-torn country, as well as the likelihood of his sons being drafted into military service. Turkey’s bureau of migration management declined to respond when contacted for comment.
“Those who refused to sign the deportation papers were assaulted,” he adds. “Once you were in the deportation centre, they asked you every day whether you want to stay here for ever – or go to Syria. It felt like the only option was to say yes.”
A Syrian journalist, Mohammad Alsaloum, describes his experience in a detention centre as “psychological torture” and says that many of his fellow detainees caved in and agreed to return to Syria voluntarily before being bussed to the border.
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A month in the metal huts of the detention centre came to an abrupt end for Saeed and his sons when the earthquakes struck. The centre was destroyed, and hundreds of detainees took the opportunity to escape.
After a day without electricity, water or food, guards arrived to check on the people who remained. “They said they will find those who escaped, but if you stayed we will now set you free,” Saeed says. He was released in the middle of the night into a scene of complete devastation.
Still reeling from the shock of the earthquake, Saeed and his sons walked for 15 hours to Antakya, the nearest large city. The journey was so arduous that Saeed’s two sons had to carry him at one point as his toenails began to peel away. In Antakya, they boarded a bus to Istanbul.
“We’re now in a new reality: the authorities set us free, but we didn’t get any of our ID cards or documents back,” he says. Saeed, afforded shelter in Turkey under the temporary protection law, no longer has any way to prove his legal status and fears being rearrested. He now leaves his home only for the 10-minute walk to his office.
In Lebanon, Fady also lives in fear that what happened to his brother could happen to him. He quit his job and relies solely on the £80 he receives in aid each month. In recent months, he says, many Syrians have adjusted their lives to minimise the possibility of being deported.
“Most people seldom leave their house if at all,” he says, fearing they may be picked up at a checkpoint and returned to Syria.
Their lives as Syrians in Lebanon, he says, have deteriorated quickly. “This year, things are much worse, particularly because the attention is now on the Arab League normalising relations with the Assad regime. As Syrians, we can feel this,” he says.
Groups including Human Rights Watch say the Lebanese armed forces recently drove hundreds of refugees to the border with Syria, offering no opportunity to challenge the expulsion. The army “handed them directly to the Syrian authorities. Some of them were arrested or disappeared upon their return to Syria.”
“There is definitely increased fear among refugees,” says Sarah Taleb, of the Access Center for Human Rights in Beirut, which advocates for Syrian refugees. The news that recent deportees included some who were legally registered refugees was a particular cause for concern, she says, increasing the fear among people.
“Some families aren’t sending their kids to school; most people are just staying at home. A lot of people aren’t answering calls, not even from NGOs,” she says.
* Names have been changed to protect their identities
