Rebel advance fuels dreams of home among Istanbul's Syrians

Wafaa Omar spent eight months in a Syrian jail in 2014 before being released. The English teacher has lived in Istanbul ever since but is desperate to return to Damascus.

"From one week ago, I feel a very beautiful feeling. Yesterday I was crying and crying and crying," she told AFP, convinced that the advance of Syrian rebels will lead to a political solution before they reach the capital.

Omar, 55, is one of about half a million Syrians who live in Istanbul, Turkey's biggest city. Three million Syrians have sought refuge in the country after fleeing the civil war that left some 500,000 dead since 2011.

She said she is initially considering "round trips" to Damascus as one of her daughters has only just started university in Istanbul.

But a lot of families will be looking in the months ahead to return to their homeland for good, she predicted.

Omar, who is involved with an aid organisation for displaced people, was thrown in jail for Facebook posts criticising the Syrian regime.

She had long viewed the head of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham rebel alliance, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, with suspicion.

"At first I was against him. But now, I think I love him so much because he did something nobody could do. He is doing something as work, as a job. And then he will leave," she said.

- 'When Assad has fallen' -

A few streets away in the bustling Fatih neighbourhood of Istanbul -- a Syrian hub -- Mohamed Amer Alzakkour said Jolani, whose HTS emerged from the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, "has changed a lot".

"I am nostalgic for my homeland," said Alzakkour, a 58-year-old engineer with swept-back hair and black spectacles originally from Syria's commercial hub, Aleppo.

He has been following the rebel advance, which has reached the third city of Homs after having taken Aleppo in the north and the central city of Hama in less than a week.

"I could easily go back... to participate in the reconstruction of the future Syria but I've got a hard time convincing my children," he said.

"I'm an Arab but my children have become Turks."

The Turkish government would likely welcome the departure of large numbers of refugees, with anti-Syrian sentiment high among its citizens.

On Wednesday, Turkey's Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya predicted a wave of returns if the rebels held on to cities seized from the regime but said it was too early to risk it.

"Aleppo is already safe," assessed Veli Davi as he went to Friday's prayers.

He fled Aleppo and has been a refugee in Turkey for 12 years. He said he would not give his children any choice about going back.

"We'll go when the situation is resolved and Assad has fallen," he said.

- Good old days -

"Assad will fall in a few days," predicted Muhamed Naes, a smartly dressed 20-year-old from behind the counter of his family shop a few streets away.

"If he's not overthrown, he will leave by his own accord. He has run out of options," he added.

"Half of us are ready to return," Naes said in accentless Turkish. "And the other half who stay behind will go back at some point because there's no place like home."

The young shopkeeper, dressed in a suit and with a neat beard, said he was ready to draw a line under his life in Turkey, where he has lived since he was eight.

"I've spent more time here than in Syria but there's our family culture there. Our families are always talking about the good old days in the country.

"We want to go back to be able to live out those stories."