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When a series of earthquakes killed thousands along the Turkish-Syrian border in February, many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees who settled in Turkey after the beginning of the civil war returned to Syria.
The Turkish government had initially granted Syrian refugees permission to leave the quake-hit Turkish provinces for up to two months; as a result, hundreds lined up for hours at border crossings in an attempt to reunite with family members back in Syria.
Most Syrian refugees are registered in Turkey under a Temporary Protection Regulation, which grants them access to basic education and health care but it also requires they not leave the provinces in which they are registered. Major cities like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir had already stopped allowing such registrations in the early stages of the refugee crisis. The majority of Syrians today live in Turkey’s south-eastern regions, closer to their homeland.
Syrian actor Mohammad Hamza, 21, in Gaziantep, Turkey a few days before leaving the city and moving to Canada with his family, in April. The actor fled war-torn Aleppo and moved to Gaziantep in 2013, where he worked for a few years in a factory before starting acting at a local theater and later in large film productions. Not long after the earthquakes hit his adopted city, the family was granted refugee status in Canada.
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