Hundreds of Syrians celebrated the fall of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in jubilant scenes outside the Fatih Mosque in central Istanbul on Sunday, one of the focal points of their 500,000-strong Syrian community in the Turkish city.
Türkiye has become home to millions of Syrians who fled after civil war broke out in their home nation in 2011.
“I didn’t expect this to happen one day, not even in three centuries. No one expected this. This is a huge victory for us,” said Mohammed Quma, a student who arrived three years ago from the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. First.
“It’s incredible. It feels like we’re born again,” said Sawan al-Ahmad, holding her young son’s hand.
Ahmed survived the first few months of the siege of the strategic city of Homs.
He said he was happy to be able to take his son to his “home soil”, now that Assad has fallen after an attack by Islamist-led rebels.
The rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and allied forces seized control of parts of Syria, including the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs, from government forces in an offensive that began on November 27.
Early Sunday he entered the capital, Damascus, and announced the end of the Assad dynasty, which had ruled Syria with an iron fist for five decades.
Behind Ahmed, hundreds of Syrians chanted “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest”).
Some people waved Syrian opposition flags and called for Assad to be hanged.
Amid the jubilant crowd, whose chants could be heard hundreds of meters (yards) away, a man waved a portrait of former Syrian football star Abdel-Basset al-Sarout, who became a rebel fighter and was killed in 2019. Clash with Assad’s forces.
‘He will go to hell’
“Today is a day of great celebration for us Syrians,” said Ibrahim al-Mohammed, 42, one of the three million Syrian refugees living in neighboring Turkey.
“My son became disabled because of Assad,” he said, his eyes red and his voice thick with emotion.
“We were living in Aleppo and the building next door was bombed. My son was in shock. He lost the ability to speak. He’s 13 now and starting to get a little better.”
“Praise be to God. We have got rid of Assad,” said Ahmed Mohammed, a Quran teacher who came to Turkey from Aleppo 11 years ago after defecting from the Syrian army.
“If God wills, he will be beheaded,” said one bystander, dragging his thumb across his throat.
Qama said he did not care what happened to Assad.
“It is enough that he is gone,” he said.
“He can go to live in Russia, in Belarus, in Venezuela, wherever he wants to go. Let him go because he’s going to hell.”
Qama said he hoped all of Syria would be “united under one flag” and predicted that 50 percent of Syrian refugees in Türkiye would return home.
He said the perceived fall of the Assad regime had changed his personal plans.
“Well, before this week my plan was to get a masters (degree) in the UK,” said the civil engineering student at Istanbul’s prestigious Bogazici University.
“But now I feel that I can be beneficial to the future and reconstruction of Syria. So I will probably go back.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
