According to the federal government, 10,253 Syrian nationals who were required to leave the country were living in Germany at the end of November. However, only 884 of them had no tolerance. A toleration is issued if the deportation of a foreigner who is obliged to leave the country is temporarily suspended. This can happen for various reasons, such as to avoid family separation, due to legal or practical obstacles – for example because travel documents are missing or the person concerned is ill – or if someone has started training.
Although Syrians are still seeking protection in Germany, their number has fallen sharply since long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by the Islamist militia HTS in December 2024.
Last year, 23,256 people from Syria applied for asylum in Germany for the first time, following 76,765 initial asylum applications from Syrians in 2024.
The HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa is now controlling Syria’s fortunes as interim president and is trying to move closer to the West.
His planned visit to Berlin, where he is scheduled to meet Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) and other government representatives on Tuesday, was welcomed by some of the 1.22 million people with Syrian roots. But others are loudly critical. These include Kurds and representatives of the Yazidis.
The Greens parliamentary group is campaigning for a right to remain for Yazidis from Iraq. The left-wing faction also wants such a regulation, but also for members of the religious community who come from Syria. “It is irresponsible and outrageous to deport genocide survivors to such conditions,” says the parliamentary group’s refugee policy spokeswoman, Clara Bünger.
Al-Sharaa’s entry raises “fundamental questions about the coherence of state action and about protecting the interests of victim communities who have found protection in Germany,” says the Congress of Yazidis in Diaspora.
According to the federal government, almost 100,000 members of the Yazidi religious group have fled Iraq from Iraq and almost 15,000 Yazidis from Syria to Germany since 2014. Three years ago, the Bundestag recognized the crimes of the terrorist militia Islamic State (IS) against the Yazidis as genocide.
Thousands of people have recently fled the eastern surroundings of the Syrian city of Aleppo. The background is fighting between government troops and the predominantly Kurdish militia SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces).
