(26 Jun 2018) LEADIN:
Syrians living in Turkey have been reacting to Sunday's election results.
Incumbant president Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to begin returning them to their homeland during his campaign.
STORYLINE:
Istanbul's Aksaray neighbourhood is also known as "Little Syria" - a reference to the number of Syrian businesses operating here.
Turkey has hosted more than three million of its neighbours since war broke out over the border in 2011.
And in the cafes and restaurants in this area, they meet up, eat, talk and even smoke the traditional Syrian waterpipe, Nargileh, together.
But since the Turkish presdeintial and parliamentary elections on Sunday, concerns have been rising.
Turkey's current president Recep Tayyip Erdogan won over 52 percent of the votes in the presidential race, and his ruling Justice and Development Party garnered 42.5 percent of the parliamentary vote.
Both Erdogan and the opposition party leaders pledged during their elections campaign plans to start sending Syrians back to their country.
Syrians here are sceptical about the plan.
Translator Mohamed Shehada is from Aleppo. He believes Erdogan was just referring to small pockets of the country, such as Tell Abyad and Manbij.
"Both are just villages, not cities. So, he said that he intends to send back some of the Syrian guests from Tell Abyad and Manbij to their homes. This does not mean that the entire four million (refugees) belong in Tell Abyad and Manbij," he says.
"Such statements are not always applicable on the ground. Where can he send all these people? Moreover, there are some who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and established their own businesses. It is definitely impossible to ask them to abandon their own businesses and leave the country all of a sudden."
In fact, many Syrians insist they would be only too keen to return - as long as their country is safe.
"We are willing to go back much sooner than he (Erdogan) wants to send us back, it is our own country, our homeland," says Ayman Ali El-Shaikh, a computer sciences student and consultant.
"However, does the current situation in Syria suit me to go back and reside there? No security, no safety, no stability, no nothing!"
Turkey has a significant stake in Syria, where it mounted a military operation in the north and now controls about 4,000 square kilometres (1,500 square miles) of Syrian territory.
Erdogan's policies towards its people have been welcoming until now.
But Mohammad Al-Debis, an Arabic and English Teacher from Damascus who moved to Istanbul in 2015, believes the president's words have been misunderstood.
"I don't believe that Erdogan is going to force anyone to come back to Syria," he says.
"Mr Erdogan knows that those Syrian people are here in Turkey, only five or six percent of them are refugees. The others are working, and they are paying taxes, and they are emerging in this community."
Erdogan has won a new five-year term with vastly increased powers.
But his governing party saw its parliamentary majority slip, leaving him reliant on the support of a small nationalist party.
Critics have reacted with alarm to Erdogan's victory, saying the results usher in what will effectively be one-man rule, putting someone with increasingly autocratic and intolerant tendencies at the helm of a strategically significant NATO country.
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