Since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime, driving along Turkey's southern border has been like inviting yourself into the heart of Syria, the land of its ordinary people, casual workers, humble families and young singles in search of a better future. These are those people who, over the past 13 years, since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and its ferocious repression, have fled their country to settle, with varying degrees of success, in neighboring Turkey, and who have now decided to return home as quickly as possible, bags full of belongings in hand.

They are here in their hundreds, huddled in front of the Öncüpinar, Cilvegözü and Yayladagi border posts, leading to Aleppo, Idlib and Latakia. Bright-eyed but tired, they wait in front of mobile offices manned by Turkish migration officials, dispatched for the occasion, flanked by gendarmes and a few NGOs, come to distribute warm clothing and tea. After registering their fingerprints and obtaining the green light from Ankara's tax authorities, they are asked to sign a "voluntary return" form. This document certifies their definitive departure from Turkey.

Sitting on a blanket in front of a packed TV screen, with her nine-year-old son by her side, Racha, who gave only her first name, like some of the other people we met, had a vague look in her eyes. Her husband was further back, somewhere in the queue at the Cilvegözü crossing, the busiest of the three crossing points in recent days, with between 500 and 1,000 departures daily. Racha said she was just impatient to cross to the other side, to return for the first time in 10 years to the city of Aleppo, which she left in the middle of a bombardment by regime forces. She had just turned 19. Her house had been destroyed. "Relatives are rebuilding it," she said.

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