Syrian Political History

Syria is seen as the fault line of the region due to its geographical location, its population structure with different sectarian and ethnic groups and its complex foreign policy connections. The developments in the country, which is a transit point of regional rivalry, make the importance of the country critical for both its neighbours and the region. On the other hand, the sectarian dimension of the Syrian crisis also differentiates the policies and solution methods adopted by many actors involved in the issue since the beginning of the events.

Throughout history, Syria has been used to describe the geography that encompasses the entire eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This name, which was first used by the ancient Greeks to describe the place where three continents meet, was used until the beginning of the twentieth century to refer to the region that today includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine and Israel. The region, which is geographical rather than political, expresses the natural borders of the ‘Greater Syria Ideal’ and is the most important historical argument of the geography-based official policies of the modern Syrian State.

Syria in Ancient Times

Syria has been an important region since the beginning of civilisation and settled life. The earliest known inhabitants of present-day Syria were hunter-gatherer peoples who created the Natufien culture. The first settlement in Syria dates back to 5000 BC. Damascus is probably the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.

The Akkadians dominated the region between 2240-2000 BC and the Amurids between 2000-1800 BC. The Yamhad Kingdom, which was dominant around Aleppo between 1750-1550 BC, was destroyed as a result of Hittite attacks from 1600 BC. The Mittanni State, which lived between 1500-1360 BC and was founded by the Huris, was also destroyed as a result of Hittite and Assyrian attacks.

After the war between the Hittites and Egyptians who wanted to take control of the region in 1286 BC, the Kadesh Treaty, the first written treaty in history, was signed. According to this treaty, Northern Syria was left to the Hittites and Southern Syria was left to Egyptian territory.

The sovereignty of the Arameans, who took over the region after the Hittites, was ended by the Assyrians. When the Assyrians were destroyed by the Medes in 612 BC, Babylonian sovereignty began in Syria. The Persians, who captured Babylon in 539 BC, were defeated by Alexander the Great in 333 BC and Syria came under the rule of the Macedonians.

Although they did not rule over the entire region, many small kingdoms were established in various parts of ancient Syria. These are as follows; Irsal Kingdom (1075-587 BC), Jewish Kingdom (142 BC - 100 AD), Aleppo Kingdom (1800-1450 BC), Damascus Kingdom (950-732 BC) and Phoenician Kingdom (1000-520 BC).

Syria came under the control of the Roman Empire in 64 B.C. After the disintegration of Rome, Byzantine rule began in the IVth century A.D., which lasted for about one and a half centuries. During this period, Syria was subjected to Sassanid attacks.

Islamic Dominance in Syria

After the armies under the command of Khalid bin Walid gained control in 634, the rule of Muslim Arab states began in Syria. With this process, Syria has tended towards Muslim Arab identity. The lands of Syria, which came under Umayyad rule in 660, lost its former importance when the centre of the caliphate was moved from Damascus to Baghdad as a result of the destruction of the Umayyad State by the Abbasids in 750.

After the Abbasids, Muslim-Christian struggle started on Syrian lands. Syria, which broke away from the central authority with the weakening of the Abbasids, was connected to the Tolunids in Egypt. Tolunogullari was the first Muslim Turkish state to establish sovereignty in Syria. After the fall of the Tolunids in 905, the north of the country came under the rule of the Hamdenids in Aleppo and the south of the country came under the rule of the Ikhshidids who dominated Egypt. The Fatimid armies, which gained strength in later periods and captured Egypt, captured Palestine and then Damascus in 969.

In the 11th century, the rule of the Great Seljuk State, which started in Syria, was short-lived due to the Crusades. In 1128, after Imad al-Din Zengi, one of the Seljuk Emirs and the Atabee of Mosul, expelled the Crusader forces from Aleppo, his son Nureddin Zengi took back Syria. In 1171, Selaheddin Ayyubi, who entered Egypt as the commander of the Zengis, put an end to the Fatimid State and laid the foundations of a powerful state that included Syria and Egypt.

After the collapse of the Ayyubid State, the Mamluk army under the command of Sultan Baybars defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ayn Goliath in 1260 and established sovereignty in Syria. During this period, the former Ayyubid lands in Syria were divided into six provinces, the largest of which was Damascus. During this period, when the administration was largely left to Syrian Arab families, harsh policies were followed against sects such as Druze, Nusayris, Ismailia and Maronite Christians.

Four centuries of Ottoman rule

On 24 August 1516, Yavuz Sultan Selim defeated the Mamluk army at the Battle of Mercidabık and annexed Syria to the Ottoman lands. During the four centuries of Ottoman rule, Syria experienced a golden age in political, social, economic and cultural terms.

The Ottoman Empire, which divided Syria, which it called ‘Biladu'sh-Sham’, into four provinces, namely Damascus, Aleppo, Tripoli and Sidon (later Acre), established a military feudal system that granted a certain degree of autonomy to local communities while ensuring centralised control in the region. On the other hand, Arab clergymen also took part in the administration, except for some top administrators appointed from the centre. In this period, Damascus and Aleppo's close trade ties with Europe led to the emergence of a strong merchant class composed of Christians and Jews.

As of the second half of the 18th century, rebellions in the region prepared the ground for the military intervention of European states. In 1798, the French Army under Napoleon Bonaparte organised an expedition to Egypt and then tried to invade Syria. However, it could not overcome the forces of Cezzar Ahmet Pasha at Acre.

After the withdrawal of France, the governor of Egypt, Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Pasha, took advantage of the crisis environment in which the Ottoman Empire was in and established his dynasty in Egypt. He then led an army under the command of his son İbrahim Pasha to Syria and took these lands under his control in 1832.

During the reign of Mehmet Ali Pasha, the activities of American and European states in the region through missionary schools and a number of humanitarian organisations intensified. The revolts that developed as a result of the religious divisions in Syrian society turning into violence spread throughout the region in a short time. After the defeat of the Ottoman forces in the Battle of Nizip in 1839, the European states intervened in the situation and forced Mehmet Ali Pasha to withdraw from Syria, and the region came back under Ottoman rule.

During the Tanzimat period, with the modernisation of the administration in line with secularisation and centralisation, the power of the pashas and tax collectors, who were feudal powers in the region, was significantly weakened. In the new order, the provinces were left to the administration of officials paid by the central government. Large landowning families, on the other hand, although they seemed to have lost their feudal privileges, continued to exist as the dominant class in society, administrative and economic life. However, the granting of equal rights to Christians with the Tanzimat and Islahat Edicts was met with a reaction among Muslims in Syria. As the tension in the region increased with the intervention of the Western states, this time Muslim-Druze and Muslim-Christian conflicts based on religion were added to the Maronite-Druze wars of the previous years.

The policies pursued by the Committee of Union and Progress following the declaration of the Constitutional Monarchy prepared the ground for the development of an opposition based on Arab nationalism in Syria.

During World War I, Syria, which was an important military operation centre of the Ottoman Empire, was the main target of the British military forces stationed in Egypt. Jamal Pasha was appointed as the governor of the region and at the same time as the commander of the Ottoman IVth Army stationed in Damascus. Cemal Pasha pursued a very harsh policy on the grounds that some Arab leaders were in co-operation with the British and French. Lawrence evaluates Jamal Pasha's policies as follows; ‘He united all classes, conditions and beliefs in Syria and brought them under the pressure of a common misery and fear. He had thus made a planned rebellion possible.’

However, Cemal Pasha was quite right in his concerns; on 27 June 1916, Sharif Hussein was to declare that he had launched an uprising against the Turks in accordance with the agreement he had reached with Britain. In 1918, British troops, supported by an Arab army deployed in the Hejaz, launched an offensive and occupied the region.

Following the occupation of Syria by the Entente, Faisal, the son of Sharif Hussein, who had rebelled with the promise of establishing an independent state, entered Damascus and established an Arab government in the region with the support of Britain. This government was considered as the first step towards independence by the Arab nationalist community.

Although the Syrian Congress convened in Damascus by Arab leaders who had been promised independence from the British during the war declared Faisal as the king of a united Syria including Palestine, the Entente powers left Palestine to the British and Syria and Lebanon separately to the French mandate administration within the framework of the Sykes Picot Agreement at the San Remo Conference.

French Mandate Administration (1920-1946)

The French endeavoured to strengthen their position in Syria by weakening Arab nationalism by supporting religious and ethnic minorities. In this framework, the aim was to establish an Alawite state in the north, a Sunni state in the centre and a Druze state in the south. Only a Christian state was established in Lebanon, while the rest of Syria was divided into five autonomous regions based on ethnic and religious differences. These are Jabal al-Druze, Aleppo, Latakia, Damascus and Iskenderun.

One of the most important supports provided to the French administration by the minorities, who were supported in economic and political fields, was their taking part in a local army called ‘Special Eastern Mediterranean Troops’ established by the French for the control of the region. This situation paved the way for minorities, especially Alawites, to be appointed to important positions in the Syrian army in the future and thus to play a role in political crises. Moreover, this situation has also been effective in eliminating the sovereignty of the Sunnis, drawing the army into political life through military coups, and perhaps establishing an authoritarian regime based on a single sect.

The French, who had the most difficulties in Syria among the mandate regimes under their control, turned their oppressive policies into revolts by the Druze, Alawites and Bedouins. In 1925, Aleppo and Damascus were united under the name of ‘Syrian State’, and a year later Lebanon was separated from Syria and became an independent republic under France. Alawite and Druze administrations remained separate until 1936.

Between 1925 and 1927, more than 6000 people lost their lives in the revolts against the French mandate administration. The determined policy of the resistance front showed its effect and by 1928, the French administration had to recognise the National Group Formation, which was the umbrella of nationalist organisations in the country.

On the eve of World War II, France, which was experiencing an economically troubled period, made important changes in its policy towards the countries under its mandate. With the agreement signed at the end of 1936, the national government established under the leadership of Hashim Attasi was recognised by France. With this agreement recognising Syria's independence, the Alawite and Druze regions were included in Syria and Lebanon was accepted as a separate state. This agreement gave France the right to be decisive in Syria's foreign policy and to have two military bases in the region. In line with Turkey's request, France accepted the separate administration of Iskenderun Sanjak, and later Hatay was annexed to Turkey.

Syria, under the control of the Vichy Government, which surrendered to Germany at the beginning of the Second World War, was captured by the British and Free French forces organising a joint operation and the independence of the country was declared. In the elections held in 1943, the anti-French National Front government was formed and Shukri al-Quwatli was elected President of Syria.

The Soviet Union recognised Syria and Lebanon unconditionally as sovereign states in July 1944, the US in September and the UK the following year, and began to pressure France to evacuate Syria. After lengthy negotiations in the UN Security Council, British and French forces agreed to withdraw from Syria and Lebanon at the same time. On 17 April 1946, France announced to the international community that it had withdrawn all its troops from Syrian territory. Thus, the French mandate rule in Syria, which had lasted for 25 years, came to an end.

Syria and Baath Party

The Ba'ath Party was founded in 1943 as the Arab Revival Party by a group of Syrian Arab intellectuals, almost all of them Western educated and led by the Orthodox Christian Michel Wallach and Saladin Bitar.

Baathist ideology, which had its origins in the romantic-populist German Nationalism of the 19th century, was based on two main theses. The first was Arab Nationalism, which expressed that all Arabs were one nation, and the second was Arab Socialism.

The Baath represented a challenge to the domination of Syria's political life by a small number of large urban families and the loose associations formed by parties or leaders who articulated their interests; it attracted the interest of classes that did not hold a dominant position in society and, to a large extent, communities outside the Sunni Muslim majority, such as Alawites, Druze and Christians.

The organisation of elements whose ethnic identities overlapped with their class positions within the Party and in the army by using regional, tribal and sectarian ties, and the processes of coming to power in this way deeply affected Syrian politics.

Military Coups (1949-1970)

Shortly after gaining its independence, Syria underwent radical changes as a result of successive military coups. The first military coup took place on 30 March 1949 under the leadership of Hosni Zaim, a Sunni general. After the coup, which was supported by the CIA, Zaim declared himself President and dissolved the parliament. After the annexation of Hatay to the Republic of Turkey, Hüsnü Zaim left Antakya and became known as a friend of the Turks.

On 14 August 1949, Zaim was removed from power in a coup d'état led by General Sami Hnavi and executed. The coup d'état carried out by Sami Hnavi was supported by the British. Although Sami Khynnavi allowed the reinstatement of banned political parties and the re-run of elections after taking power, the military was in the background of political life.

On 19 December 1949, at a time when the idea of unification with Iraq was gaining momentum, Colonel Edip Çiçekli staged a coup d'état against Sami Hinnavi, who he claimed was collaborating with Iraq against the interests of the country. The leader of the coup, Edip Cicekli, became the Chief of the Syrian General Staff in 1951 and then was declared the Head of State by the Supreme War Council. Although his predecessors ruled for very short periods of four and six months, Edip Çiçekli ruled for four years in a country like Syria. On 10 July 1953, he was elected President in a referendum.

The Baath Party played an important role in the formation of the political ground to remove Edip Çiçekli from power on 25 February 1954 with the coup led by Colonel Faisal Al-Atasi. The military coup that removed Çiçekli from power brought a civilian administration to power, and after the elections, the conservative National and People's Parties formed a coalition and came to power.

During the years 1955-1957, when conservative parties were in power, radical political currents gradually strengthened; in particular, demands such as Arab unity, anti-Westernism, rapprochement with the Soviet Union, improvements in economic and political fields were the main factors that brought the Baath Party, the Arab Socialist Party and the Communist Party together and enabled them to act together.

During this period, the Baathists made intense efforts to seize power in the country. In order to increase their influence in politics and the military, on the one hand, they protested against the newly formed governments and ensured their withdrawal from power, and on the other hand, they played an important role in the resignation of the Chief of the General Staff.

United Arab Republic (1958-1961)

On 1 February 1958, the United Arab Republic (UAR) was established with the unification of Egypt and Syria. Although almost all political structures in Syria supported the idea of unification, it was the Baath Party that took the lead. After a short period of time, unrest emerged within the union. The source of the unrest was some of the policies implemented by Egypt, which had a dominant role in this union or partnership. Egypt intervened in Syria's internal affairs, removed Syrian politicians from power and threatened the interests of the middle class with socialist laws. All this led to the strengthening of a nationalist opposition to the union.

In September 1961, a coup d'état by Sunni officers from Damascus led by Colonel Karim al-Nahlawi ended the United Arab Republic. It is noteworthy that the officers who carried out the coup appointed officers from the same sect and region to strategic points while planning the coup.

Power Struggle in the Baath Party (1961-1970

The Separatist regime, which dominated Syrian politics in the immediate aftermath of this coup and ruled until 1963, symbolised a complete break with the policies implemented during the GDR period and the ideology put forward by the Baath Party in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1962, after an unsuccessful coup attempt against the ‘Separatist Regime’, the Ba'ath Party came to power in a military coup in 1963. In 1966, the radical wing of the Baath Party, dominated by regionalists, carried out a new coup d'état with many purges and utilising sectarian-regional-tribal ties. This put an end to the ideological transformation of the Ba'ath Party since the early 1960s, which had prioritised socialism, and ushered in the radical phase of Ba'ath Party rule (the Neo-Ba'ath era). Thus, in the period 1963-1970, there was a shift in the Party from the older generation of nationalist Baathists to radical socialist Baathists.

The ‘Neo-Baathist’ group, led by officers of Alawite origin such as Hafez al-Assad, Salah Jadid and Mohammad Umran, could not protect itself from inter-military rivalry, intra-party power struggle and counter-coup to the extent that it established symbiotic (symbiotic) relations with the army. As minorities of rural origin began to gain a decisive position in the Party, the power struggle was permeated first by sectarian ties of Alevis against Sunnis, and then by regional and tribal ties in the struggle between members of minorities against each other. The use of sectarian, regional and tribal ties in the struggle for power was in line with the Baathist ideology, which focussed on breaking the dominance of the Sunni Muslim elite in Syria. Rural minorities saw organisation through their own sects, regions or tribes as a necessary model of organisation in the fight against Sunni Muslim opposition.

Neo-Baathist Period (1966-1970)

On 23 February 1966, the neo-Baath group led by Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad seized power in a military coup, the first time that Alawite officers had been so influential in the army and government.

The putschist officers appointed Nur al-Din Attasi, a member of the Sunni community and from a feudal family, as head of the civilian government. During this period, the influence of the Ba'ath Party and the secret service on public life gradually increased.

On the other hand, one year after the 1966 coup d'état, the Six-Day War with Israel, which ended in defeat, led to changes in the sphere of power in Syria. The defeat discredited the radical socialist regime in Egypt and Syria. While Salah Jadid and Attasi, his representative in the civilian government, lost prestige after the defeat, Hafez al-Assad, who served as the Minister of Defence and Air Force Commander in the government, came to the fore.

Religious and Ethnic Structure

The population of the State of Syria is around 22.5 million. Syria is culturally homogeneous to a considerable extent, but it is a country of great diversity in terms of ethnic and religious identity. The major ethnic group is Arabs with 90.3 per cent, while Kurds, Armenians and other groups make up 9.7 per cent of the population. Religiously, Muslims are 86 per cent Muslims, divided into 74 per cent Sunni and 12 per cent Shia. Christians account for 10 per cent and Druze 3 per cent. In general, there are three main branches of the Shiite sect, namely Zaidism, Imamiyya and Ismailism. Nusayrism, which is one of the sects that Sunni religious scholars call the excesses of the Shiites, presents itself as Alawite, that is, as a branch of Shia. There is a contradiction in defining the Nusayris, who constitute approximately 12% of the minority population, as the majority because they are effective in power, rather than the Sunni-Arabs, who constitute the majority of the population. Relations between the Sunni majority and heterodox communities (Alawites, Ismailis, Druze) have traditionally been built on religious-sectarian antagonisms. Sunnis generally regarded these communities as deviant and irreligious and avoided social contact with them.

Hafez al-Assad and the Baath Party (1970-1991)

Hafez al-Assad seized power on 13 November 1970 in a military coup against the Salah Jadid regime. H.Assad did not intend to change the nationalist socialist line of the regime. He only wanted to restore the regime with the ‘Movement of Correction’ (Movement of Tashih). With 99.2% of the votes in the referendum held on 12 March 1971, H.Assad became the first Alawite President of Syria. In order to strengthen the regime and neutralise the potential opposition, he founded the National Progressive Front on 7 March 1972. Syria's permanent constitution, which gave the Assad regime a legal basis, came into force in March 1973 with the support of 97.6% of the voters.

The regime in Syria between 1970 and 2000, the framework and centre of which was determined by Hafez al-Assad, can be described as an ‘Assad-style totalitarianism’ that was built on delicate political and social balances and achieved stability. The offices of the head of state, general secretary of the party and commander-in-chief of the armed forces were at the centre of a highly complex web of interest relations that, in the person of Assad, pervaded all state and social institutions. Assad also utilised a combination of kinship and sectarian solidarity, Leninist party loyalty and bureaucratic management to concentrate power in a presidential monarchy.

Assad was surrounded by a loyal political and military elite. The institutional structure that contained this elite, which monopolised authority and the instruments of power and was the power centre of the state, consisted of the Baath Party, the Syrian Security Forces (the Syrian army and intelligence agencies) and a powerful state bureaucracy.

As the representative of the Alawite minority, Assad's regime's ability to have a broad popular base with support from all segments of society depended on the effective use of the Baath Party. It was possible to attract elements of the country who did not have an Arab ethnic identity into the party and with an ideological discourse that could appeal to wider masses. During this period, special attention was paid to the lower class members of the Sunni Muslim majority, and non-Arab Kurds, Circassians and Armenians were also admitted to the party cadres. After 1970, the Baath Party opened its doors completely to the public and even former members of the Muslim Brotherhood and local leaders in rural areas were admitted to the party.

In Syria, the main basis for the survival of regimes and governments was the Syrian Army. Full control of the army in Syria was essential for the survival of the Assad regime, to ensure its stability and the uninterrupted continuation of its policies.

In order to alleviate the reactions from the Sunni majority, to prove that he was not building a state based on the Alawite minority and that he was a national leader, Assad included many Sunni Muslims in the elite class in the cabinet, the army and the party. Although Sunnis seemed to hold some of the top positions in the Syrian cabinet and the army, Alawite officers were in charge of the regime's most important control apparatus, the intelligence and security organisations. The Alawite officers around Hafez al-Assad were called ‘Barons’.

When the problems such as the fall in oil prices, the increase in corruption and bribery, the isolation of the country from the international platform and the shortage of foreign currency were added to the problems such as the fall in oil prices, the increase in corruption and bribery, the isolation of the country from the international platform and the shortage of foreign exchange since the mid-1980s, Assad took a pragmatic decision to save the country from this troublesome environment and turned towards a policy of rapprochement with the West in the early 1990s. In this framework, Syria, which sided with the USA during the Gulf War I against Iraq, sent troops to Iraq as part of the Peacekeeping Force and received financial aid from the Arab countries in the Gulf in return.

Hama Massacre: 2 February 1982

The city of Hama was the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which targeted the rapid absorption of the Alawites, whom they regarded as irreligious, into the government. The failure of the organisation's assassination attempt against Hafez al-Assad in 1980 brought the unabated Sunni Muslim-Nusayri conflict to a very high level. Hafez al-Assad's first reaction was to kill Sunni Muslims in prisons. Assad, who hardened his attitude towards the members of the organisation in the following process, put the final point to the conflicts with the Hama massacre on 2 February 1982, in which the Syrian army participated as a whole and approximately 38,000 people, mostly Muslims (in different sources it is stated as 10,000 or even 20,000), were killed. During the attacks, most of the mosques in the city were destroyed and the call to prayer was not heard in Hama for three months. Some 800.000 Syrians had to flee the country. In the aftermath of the massacre, the Muslim Brotherhood lost much of its power; its members and sympathisers either fled abroad or ceased their political activities in the country.

The Hama massacre strengthened the ties of solidarity within the Alawite community and put Hafez al-Assad in an unrivalled position in Syria.

Bashar al-Assad's Syria from the Damascus Spring to the Arab Spring

Bashar al-Assad came to power by securing the support of the army, the intelligence services, the Alawite notables and the deep-rooted cadres in the Baath Party, which were the cornerstones of the regime established by his father in Syria. B. Assad became the President of Syria with 97% of the votes in the referendum of 10 July 2000. Thus, the ‘soft transition’ planned by Hafez al-Assad for his son who would rule the country after him was successfully completed.

After coming to power, B. Assad's emphasis on the necessity of reform and democracy gave hope to intellectuals expecting reform. The entrepreneurial sector, which was strengthened thanks to the economic liberalisation implemented during the Hafez al-Assad era, and the intellectuals, mostly consisting of academics, lawyers and artists, came together and organised under the name of ‘Revival of Civil Society’, which enabled many demands on reform issues to be voiced. The regime took these demands into consideration and immediately afterwards, developments that could be called important in political and economic terms started to take place.

In this period dubbed as the ‘Damascus Spring’, political prisoners were released and the parties within the ‘National Progressive Front’ were allowed to publish their own newspapers. Within the framework of the fight against corruption and bribery, several senior executives were dismissed. In 1996, Bashar's administration liberalised and expanded the use of the Internet, which had been allowed to be used only by senior officials. In order to end the state monopoly in the press, a law allowing the establishment of private press organisations was approved during this period. In addition, a serious and planned economic reform programme and a trade liberalisation policy have been put into practice since July 2000. The aim of the economic reforms was to make the country's economy more efficient through the establishment of a private banking system and a stock exchange, new exchange rate policies and the acceleration of foreign capital inflows into the country.

However, Bashar's reforms, which were intended to fulfil both the interests of the state and, to some extent, to respond to growing demands for change, were deemed insufficient by Syrian intellectuals. In 2001, the intellectuals presented a manifesto to the government calling for the establishment of new parties other than the ‘National Progressive Front’ and for free elections. This manifesto contained demands that seriously threatened the regime and could put an end to the dominance of the Alawites and the Baath Party in the government. From this point on, the government took action and activated the mass organisations (women's branches, student branches and youth branches) affiliated to the ruling Baath Party. The movement, which received harsh reactions from within the regime, was soon suppressed as many of its members were sent to prison and their meetings were not allowed. These interventions, which brought the ‘Damascus Spring’ process to an end, clearly demonstrated the power of the Falcons, a group of anti-reform political and military elites within the state.

Towards the end of 2001, the wave of reforms was largely reversed and steps back towards democratisation began to be taken. Bashar al-Assad is neither firmly anti-reform, nor is he willing to allow reforms to lead to a possible regime change.

After the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States, in defining its changing security perception, included Syria among the ‘rogue states with regional-based global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction’. The US accused Syria of producing chemical weapons, harbouring terrorist groups and supporting the insurgents in Iraq during the 2003 Iraq operation. Thereafter, external pressure on Syria intensified. In October of the same year, Israel launched a military attack against Syria, citing a suicide attack in its own country. Five months after this attack, a clash broke out between Kurds and Arabs in Qamishli, Syria. In May 2004, the US declared an embargo on Syria.

At the same time, the US started to put pressure on Syria for reforms on the grounds of democratisation, human rights, economic liberalisation and protection of ethnic minorities. These pressures mobilised the opposition forces in Syria. In the face of increasing pressure from within and outside to expand the reforms, the Assad administration, on the one hand, tried to minimise the pressure by continuing the reform process, and on the other hand, it turned to new searches in foreign policy in order to relieve the regime. In this framework, the importance of rapprochement policy with the EU has recently increased for Syria.

On 14 February 2005, the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese opposition leader and former prime minister, raised all suspicions towards Syria. After this incident, as a result of the pressure exerted by the US and France on Syria to withdraw its troops from Lebanon before the UN Security Council, Syria withdrew its troops. It is also noteworthy that the scope of the changes made in the direction of political reforms was expanded after the assassination of Hariri, as a result of the US and other external pressures.

The ‘Arab Spring’, which emerged with the beginning of popular uprisings demanding democracy and freedom against the dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, started to affect Syria in March 2011. As the demonstrations that started in Daraa in March 2011 spread to important cities such as Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Latakia, Banyas and Deir al-Zor, Bashar al-Assad faced a stronger wave of opposition. An indication that the regime did not get rid of its old habits was that the army units reacted harshly to the demonstrators and killed hundreds of people without blinking an eye. The United States, whose relations with the Damascus regime have been bad for a long time, condemned Assad for his violence and called on him to step down on 18 August, stating that he had lost legitimacy.

Bashar al-Assad has maintained the pragmatic character of Syrian foreign policy, which is one of the most important features of Syrian political culture and which reached its peak under Hafez al-Assad, especially in the context of the various alliances he has established. Against Israel and the United States, which the Bashar al-Assad regime perceives as the main threat, Syria has been partially relieved by the fact that it has a regional power like Iran behind it and that it has deterrent trump cards such as Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as the fact that Russia and China have blocked sanctions in the Security Council, at least for the time being. Therefore, the Assad regime still holds more than one card that it can use to maintain its power.

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