Germany’s Merz wants Syrian refugees to go home
Under pressure from the far right, Germany’s chancellor says his country will begin repatriating Syrians. The reality is more complicated.
NOVEMBER 5, 2025 4:00 AM CET
BY JAMES ANGELOS
Chancellor Friedrich Merz has a simple message for many of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who found sanctuary in Germany during their country’s long and brutal civil war: It’s time to go back to Syria.
In reality, it will be hard for Merz to compel a large share of the roughly one million Syrians living in Germany to leave. But under pressure from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose leaders vow to forcibly return Syrian refugees en masse, the chancellor is taking a harder line on Germany’s Syrian population, and says he’ll work with Syria’s president, former rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, to do so.
“The civil war in Syria is over,” Merz said earlier this week. “There are now no longer any grounds for asylum in Germany, which means we can begin repatriating people.”
Merz’s comments reflect his latest push to move his conservatives sharply to the right on the AfD’s signature issue of migration. Until now, the broad strategy doesn’t appear to have worked, with the AfD only rising in popularity and coming in slightly ahead of Merz’s conservatives in many recent polls.
Merz is seeking to undo the legacy of one of his conservative predecessors as chancellor, Angela Merkel, whose generous asylum policies — particularly during the refugee crisis of 2015 — made Germany the prime European destination for Syrians and other migrant groups fleeing war and poverty. During Merkel’s tenure and beyond, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fled to Germany. Aside from Ukrainians, Syrians constitute the largest group of refugees now living in the country.
Merz blames Merkel’s migration policies for enabling the rise of the AfD, now the largest opposition party in the German parliament. Over the summer, Merz said his conservatives were “trying to correct” Merkel’s past policies. His pledge to repatriate Syrians is one of his most direct efforts yet to do so.
It also echoes similar recent efforts of his government to establish contact with Taliban officials to arrange deportations of Afghans living in Germany, beginning with those convicted of crimes. Human rights groups have sharply criticized those plans, saying returnees may be subject to harsh punishment and persecution in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Merz on Monday said he had invited al-Sharaa, a former al-Qaida member, to Berlin in order to discuss deportations of Syrians convicted of crimes. Merz also suggested that Syrians in Germany have a duty to return home to rebuild their war-torn country.
“Without these people, reconstruction will not be possible,” Merz said. “Those in Germany who then refuse to return to the country can, of course, be deported in the near future.”
‘They must be deported, with force’
Merz’s deportation threat belies a far morecomplex reality on the ground.
In the several yearsthat many Syrians have lived in Germany, a large number have found jobs and become citizens. Some 287,000 Syrian citizens were working in Germany last year, and about 83,000 became German citizens.
Despite the tough rhetoric, Merz has not said he will forcibly repatriate Syrians outside of those who have committed crimes — at least not yet. His government’s strategy for now appears to be to incentivize others to depart of their own accord.
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-friedrich-merz-afd-politics-syrians-civil-war-refugees/