The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates opened a new consulate in Turkey’s Gaziantep province today, Thursday, June 11, in the presence of Syrian officials, led by Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, as well as Turkish government figures.
Mohammed Yaqoub al-Omar, director of the Consular Administration at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Enab Baladi that the opening of the Syrian Consulate General in Gaziantep came in response to the real need for a consular presence serving hundreds of thousands of Syrians living in southern Turkey.
The step comes after years during which citizens had to travel long distances to reach Istanbul and complete their consular procedures.
Al-Omar explained that the main goal of opening the consulate is to bring services closer to citizens and reduce the financial and time burdens associated with travel, in addition to speeding up the completion of transactions and providing a modern service environment based on digitization and prior electronic booking.
Basic Consular Services
The consulate in Gaziantep will provide all basic consular services available in Syrian missions, including passports, attestations, civil status records, legal powers of attorney, and other consular services, according to al-Omar.
Accordingly, the nature of the services is similar to those provided at the Syrian consulate in Istanbul. However, opening the Gaziantep consulate aims to distribute pressure and expand access to services in Turkey’s southern provinces.
Syria has a main consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul, which the Ministry of Foreign Affairs worked to restructure after the fall of the former Syrian regime.
The Gaziantep consulate comes as part of a series of subsidiary consulates being opened by the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in several countries that host Syrian communities.
1,000 Transactions Daily
According to al-Omar, the consulate was designed according to a modern model focused on speed of processing and service quality. It includes 20 service windows dedicated to providing various consular services to visitors.
These include passport transactions, civil status records, attestations, powers of attorney, and others.
Qualified staff have also been recruited and trained to work in the various administrative, technical, and consular departments, ensuring smooth operations and the provision of services according to the “highest standards of efficiency and professionalism,” according to the director of the Consular Administration.
As for operational capacity, the consulate was designed to receive and process more than 1,000 transactions daily once fully operational, relying on the prior electronic booking system through the “MOFA SY” application. This helps organize visitor movement, avoid overcrowding, and reduce waiting times to a minimum.
“MOFA SY” is an application that Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates announced it had officially launched, making it available to all users around the world, in November 2025.
The application, according to what the ministry announced at the time, allows Syrian expatriates to benefit from various services “easily and quickly” through their smartphones at all Syrian diplomatic missions around the world.
Of more than 2.2 million Syrians living in Turkey, most of them under temporary protection status, more than 318,000 reside in Gaziantep province, according to the latest statistics by Turkey’s Migration Management Directorate.
Bonn and Jeddah
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs opened the Consulate General in the Saudi city of Jeddah, in the presence of an official Syrian and Saudi delegation, on May 7.
It also reopened the Syrian consulate in the German city of Bonn on February 12, in a ceremony attended by representatives of the German government, several ambassadors, and heads of diplomatic missions, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).
Foreign Minister al-Shibani considered the opening of the consulate in Bonn part of a “radical transformation” in Syrian diplomacy, with direct support from Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who gave particular attention to reactivating missions and establishing consulates.
This stems from a “firm conviction” that the dignity of Syrian citizens and serving them abroad are an integral part of national sovereignty, according to the Syrian minister.
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