Akcakale, Turkey: The people of Tel Abyad know what it is to bend to the political will of the day.

In the last three years they have been ruled by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Free Syrian Army, al-Qaeda's Nusra Front, the Islamists of Ahrar al-Sham, the Islamic State and now the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

"For me it doesn't matter," says taxi driver Sami Masto as he waits at the baking hot Turkish-Syrian border to see if he will be allowed to cross back into Tel Abyad now the Kurdish forces have pushed out Islamic State fighters. "I go to my work and I go home to my family. I just want to live."

"Life under [IS] was OK, they had nothing to do with us, they left us alone . . . it will be the same with the Kurds."

Not everyone is so sure.

When the YPG, backed by a Syrian rebel group and a campaign of air strikes from the US-led coalition, launched its offensive to liberate Tel Abyad from the control of IS, many of those who fled did so out of fear of the Kurdish militia and the airstrikes that now precede them.

An estimated 23,000 left the town in the last week, some so terrified and desperate they ripped holes in the border fence and flooded into Turkey, passing babies over the razor wire to waiting relatives.

Many Syrian refugees Fairfax Media interviewed at the border said they were as worried by the YPG as they were about IS.

IS militants expelled Tel Abyad's Kurdish population in mid-2013, with distraught families forcibly removed from their homes and villages. Now the YPG is in control and many in the town's Arab community fear retribution.

A slow trickle of families left the Turkish border town of Akcakale on Wednesday to return to their homes - mostly those Kurdish families who were forced to leave two years ago - but many Arab families are still waiting to see whether it is safe to return and what the YPG will do with its newfound power.

Some already know the answer.

When the YPG captured the border town of Ras al-Ayn in July 2013 some families, like that of schoolteacher Basma, say they experienced a months-long campaign of harassment that eventually drove them to flee.

Her husband, also a schoolteacher, was involved in the movement to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from the beginning of the 2011 revolution.

"When the YPG took control of the town my husband left and fled to Turkey," Basma says in the sitting room of the small flat in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa she shares with 14 other family members.

"The YPG would send out a patrol every day to let us know we were no longer welcome in our village," she says. "They turned our lives into a nightmare."

"I asked them 'what is this if it is not ethnic cleansing?' They replied 'call it what you like, you have to leave'."

Another told her: "You Arabs here are not welcome, you used to be with the Free Syrian Army and now you may be against us."

In the meantime, officials from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) tried to convince her to join, promising her a peaceful life and even offering to ensure her an 85 per cent vote if she ran in local elections, Basma recounts with some incredulity.

The taunts, Basma says, continued to escalate until the situation passed the point of no return.

"A local commander of the YPG said to me 'how long did it take you to build this very nice house?' I replied it had taken my husband and I 13 years to build our house and he said 'watch how fast it will burn'."

"I watched it burn. We lost everything, including all my official papers, my ID, my mother-in-law's and my father-in-law's ID. Everything."

Then on February 5, 2014, the final straw: a YPG patrol again came to her door, grabbed her then five-year-old son Assadullah and threatened to hold him until her husband returned to Syria.

"I took Assadullah and my two other children and we went the a nearby village the next day … the YPG patrols were passing by the house every day, so we had to hide to make sure we were not discovered."

By now they had lost everything, she says: 1000 dunams [one square kilometre] of land, their wheat and barley crops, their agricultural equipment, generators, their house and the houses of her brothers-in-law.

Bringing her elderly parents-in-law with her, Basma took the family to Turkey, where they live in the uncertainty that is a constant for refugees. Her children cannot go to school and her husband and his brothers have been warned they "may" be on a YPG wanted list, like so many who supported the Free Syrian Army.

Giving up all hope of returning to Syria, her husband paid a smuggler to take him to Sweden and the family is awaiting word on their application for reunification.

At least three other families interviewed by Fairfax Media – from Tel Hamis, Tel Tamer and Tel Abyad – also made allegations that the YPG had driven them out of their villages. In each case the increasing intensity of air strikes from the US-led coalition and the Syrian regime was also a significant factor in forcing the families to flee.

The accusation of ethnic cleansing - made both by families and by a coalition of Syrian rebel groups - is not supported with evidence of ethnic or sectarian killings.

Regardless, it is further fuelling tensions between Arabs and Kurds in a country that is in its fifth year of a civil war that has left more than 220,000 dead, up to 9 million internally displaced and just under 4 million as refugees.

Kurdish political and military officials vehemently deny the allegations that their forces are attempting to drive Arab populations out of  Kurdish-controlled areas in Hasaka province and now Tel Abyad.

Describing the allegations as "fabricated", YPG spokesman Redur Khalil wrote on his Facebook page: "We have liberated about one thousand [villages] recently, you can come here and … [see] how they live with dignity."

Mr Khalil encouraged people to stay in their homes or seek the safety of other provinces under YPG protection. "They can return to their villages and property when security comes back to the region," he wrote.

Fairfax Media made repeated attempts to contact Mr Khalil but he did not respond by the time of publication.

Human rights groups have expressed concern about the allegations.

"We're concerned about a growing number of reports of abuses by YPG forces which we are seeking to investigate further," Neil Sammonds, Amnesty's Syria, Lebanon and Jordan researcher said.

"These include multiple incidents of forced displacement over a number of months, at times based on ethnicity, and forced conscription without potential access to alternative civilian roles."

The capture of Tel Abyad gives the Syrian Kurds control of around 400 kilometres of the Syrian-Turkish border, one of the main pathways used by foreign fighters joining IS, who now control just one border crossing east of the town of Jarabulus.

After their successful push on Kobane [also known as Ayn al-Arab] and later Tel Hamis, the YPG has emerged as a significant partner for the US-led coalition that is conducting air strikes against IS in Syria and Iraq – a coalition of which Australia is a member.

A Defence Departmen spokesman said Australia had not provided military supplies to the YPG and that there was an Australian arms embargo on Syria.

"In support of the international effort against [Islamic State], and with the consent of the Iraqi government, the Australian Defence Force has completed six military store supply missions from Europe via Baghdad to Erbil since September 2014, to deliver arms and ammunition to the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq," the spokesman added. "The Kurdistan Regional Government is providing assurances to the US and other international partners regarding the use of this military equipment."

The Pentagon acknowledged this week that it was aware of the allegations against its Kurdish partners.

"We certainly have seen these reports, and it is something that we are watching for," Pentagon spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said. "Without question it is something that we'll find unacceptable, if true."