Flag carrier Turkish Airlines is resuming service to Syria on Friday with an Istanbul-Damascus flight after halting operations in 2012, due to the country\u2019s civil war, which lasted over a dozen years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many Syrians voiced joy at returning to their homeland after years of exile. Some were seen carrying flags from December\u2019s Syrian revolution, which saw the Assad regime quickly fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nearly 350 passengers boarded the flight to Damascus International Airport after doing ticket and passport checks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Passenger Fatma Zehra told reporters that she had come to T\u00fcrkiye when she was only 2 years old, and was very excited to return along with her family to her homeland where she was born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now 14 years old, Zehra said: “I\u2019ve never seen my country. I’m so excited to see it for the first time. We will be going from Damascus to Aleppo. I’ll see my grandmother there.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some 4 million Syrians took refuge in neighboring T\u00fcrkiye during the war, more than any other country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ahmet Kiraz, another passenger, said he came to T\u00fcrkiye in 2012, built a life by studying and working, and never expected to return to Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We thought we would never go back,” he said. “But when the opportunity came, we were so happy. I’m returning to my country on the first flight, it feels like a dream.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Turkish Airlines flight, which left Istanbul Airport at 0900GMT, is expected to land at Damascus International Airport after a short two-hour flight.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Flag carrier Turkish Airlines is resuming service to Syria on Friday with an Istanbul-Damascus flight after halting operations in 2012, due to the country\u2019s civil war, which lasted over a dozen years. Many Syrians voiced joy at returning to their homeland after years of exile. Some were seen carrying flags from December\u2019s Syrian revolution, which […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}