In early August, the media reported the death of a 21-year-old Syrian man as he tried to cross from the rebel-held province of Idlib to Turkey. After eight years of war in Syria, the report may have sounded almost commonplace at first, but the details of the story were far from ordinary. 

Hisham al-Mohammed was shot inside Syria, about 400 meters (nearly 440 yards) from the border. Which side the fire came from remains unknown. The wounded man was taken to a hospital on the Syrian side, where he eventually died. What drove him to Turkey was his family, which he left behind in Istanbul when police forcibly sent him back to Syria.

Mohammed had fled to Turkey with his wife, three children, father and the widow and children of his deceased uncle. He was the sole breadwinner of the family, which lived in Bagcilar, a working-class district in Istanbul. In May, police raided their home and detained Mohammed, even though he had a registration document as a person “under temporary protection” — the status that Syrians are given by the Turkish government. After a month at a repatriation center, he was deported to Idlib on June 19. On Aug. 5, the day the Syrian army broke a cease-fire in Idlib, he made the ill-fated attempt to cross the border back to unite with his family.

Mohammed was among thousands of refugees the Turkish police have rounded up and sent back to Syria this summer. According to Turkey’s official figures, there is no refugee forcibly sent back to Syria. Other sources, however, paint a different picture. According to figures released by the Bab al-Hawa border crossing management, 4,370 Syrians were deported in June and 6,160 more in July from this crossing alone.