Jarablus, Arab Punar, and Tell Abyad presented a particular situation from 1918 onwards. All these places were part of the Ottoman Empire, but situated on its fringes as no major historical roads went through these little human settlements. During the war and its aftermath, all received a flow of "Ottoman" refugees as groups of Armenians who survived to the genocide established themselves in the new French Mandate territory. Moreover, these three locations demarcated a new international border that "obviously" – as diplomatic reports state – followed the Baghdad railway. This presentation will investigate this strange and unique situation to understand what ordinary Ottomans became in the aftermath of the First World War and how their own enterprise fitted with the foreign powers' broader strategy. I first argue that refugees and minorities emerged from the war as major categories that helped to frame the post-ottoman empire's borders. From this perspective, the locations were, first of all, informal migrant settlements. For technical and geopolitical reasons, inhabitants who discovered these places during the war decided to stay in them. Ottomans became "Armenian refugees," a broader categorization which overshadowed other identities. Several hundred of these families belonged to the previous Wilaya of Aleppo, which included Gaziantep and Urfa. Their migrations followed French troops from 1918 to 1921 and they eventually participated in the establishment of a new order at the beginning of the 1920s. A large number of them established commercial activities which echoed their previous economic conditions. Moreover, technical specialties around motors and water pumps highlighted craft skills retained by the Armenians. Progressively, they became the dominant players in the newly-invented souq. On the other hand, the French authorities fueled the urbanization of these settlements by building symbolic edifices. At the end of the 1920s, ordinary Ottoman inhabitants – the Armenian refugees – had turned the ancient rural and nomadic area into a realm of small towns which radiated urbanity.