It was an Iranian scene that inspired many Syrian opposition figures to emulate it during the revolution that overthrew the Shah\u2019s regime on February 11, 1979, when the Islamist (Khomeini), the communist (Nur al-Din Kiwanouri), the Marxist-Islamist hybrid (Massoud Rajavi), the liberal nationalist (Karim Sanjabi), and the Kurdish nationalist (Abdul Rahman Qasimlo) came together in a unified effort to topple an authoritarian regime considered one of the most powerful in the Middle East. Within this context, the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) published in the following month an article in its newspaper Nidal al-Shaab (Issue 206), titled: \u201cThe Victorious Iranian Revolution Puts Iran on the Path to Freedom, Democracy, and Progress,\u201d which included the statement: \u201cIf religion in Iran has played its necessary role alongside the people against the tyrants, with the oppressed against the oppressors, with the fighters against traitors to their homeland, then what prevents it from contributing to a similar struggle in the Arab world, plagued by regimes like the Shah\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, even though Riyad al-Turk, authorized by the leadership of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau), having entered since the summer of 1976 into talks with Dr. Jamal al-Atassi, Secretary-General of the Arab Socialist Union Party, to form a democratic opposition alliance that included Arab leftists and Marxists\u2014resulting in the establishment of the National Democratic Gathering in December 1979, which also included the Arab Revolutionary Workers Party founded and led by Yassin al-Hafiz from 1965 until his death in 1978, the Arab Socialists Movement led by Akram al-Hawrani, and the Ba\u2019ath Party (February 23, 1966)\u2014yet, simultaneously, Riyad al-Turk, together with Political Bureau member Dr. Ahmad Faiz al-Fawwaz, and facilitated by Fatah leader Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), secretly met in Beirut in October 1976 with Nizar Hamdoun, the Syrian file officer in Iraqi intelligence, aiming to open a channel between the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) and Baghdad, alongside the Iraqi Ba\u2019athist faction. This occurred while Baghdad was at odds with Damascus, the Palestinian resistance was engaged in armed conflict with Syrian forces that had entered Lebanon that summer, and the Muslim Brotherhood\u2019s General Organization, led by Supreme Guide Adnan Saad al-Din, had begun forging relations with Baghdad since 1975.<\/p>\n
During the talks to form the Gathering, an Iraqi Ba\u2019ath representative joined in the summer of 1979 following the outbreak of armed clashes between Islamists and Hafez al-Assad\u2019s regime after the June 16 artillery school massacre in Aleppo. However, he refused to sign the founding charter when he insisted on a clause rejected by others, calling for \u201cthe overthrow of the regime by all possible means,\u201d whereas the Gathering\u2019s charter adopted the phrase \u201cradical and complete change of the existing approach… towards establishing a democratic regime,\u201d outlining steps including: 1) a constitution approved by an elected body guaranteeing separation of powers; 2) public freedoms; 3) defining the army\u2019s roles and keeping it neutral from ideologies and politics, among others\u2014without specifying the means to achieve these goals. Similarly, the Gathering\u2019s statement on March 18, 1980, which announced its formation, set out \u201ca program for radical and complete change of the existing approach\u201d through six steps, the last being \u201cthe establishment of a national unity government that dissolves the People\u2019s Assembly and calls for free elections to a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution based on freedom, democracy, and equality among citizens.\u201d This was preceded by five steps: lifting sieges on cities and withdrawing the army, abolishing the state of emergency, releasing democratic freedoms including the right to establish parties and issue newspapers, freeing all prisoners without exception, and abolishing the dominance of intelligence agencies. While this suggested a path potentially acceptable to both opposition and regime under very difficult political conditions for Hafez al-Assad, it did not suggest a program based on \u201cregime overthrow,\u201d which Islamists demanded in their armed confrontation with the regime, supported by Saddam Hussein\u2019s Baghdad.<\/p>\n
The Gathering\u2019s statement neither condemned nor supported Islamist violence, instead deliberately remaining silent on it under the insistence of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau), contrary to opinions expressed within the Gathering. It described the events as a \u201cpopular movement,\u201d stating that \u201cthe time has not yet passed to spare the country from the dangers of sectarian strife and civil war,\u201d which would \u201cpush the country to the brink of the abyss.\u201d For this reason, \u201ca radical and complete change of the existing approach\u201d was necessary through the six aforementioned steps. Notably, about a month and a half before the statement, on February 4, the Communist Party (Political Bureau) leader Omar Qashash was released from prison. The military intelligence chief Ali Duba told him: \u201cTell comrade Riyad that we are with you from the left,\u201d an initiative by the regime to contain the party against the Islamists, which went unheeded. Riyad al-Turk did not pressure the party to silence on Islamist violence in the Gathering\u2019s statement. Furthermore, he secretly sent Ahmed Mahfal, responsible for the party\u2019s external organization, to Baghdad in late March 1980 to attend the \u201cNational Popular Conference\u201d (see Al-Safir newspaper, issues 27 and 28, March), despite the Political Bureau issuing a letter stating that Mahfal\u2019s trip was his personal responsibility and without informing the leadership. However, his trip was coordinated with Riyad, particularly to conduct talks with the Iraqi leadership and figures such as Michel Aflaq, Salah Bitar, Shibli al-Aysami, Akram al-Hawrani, and Adnan Saad al-Din about forming a \u201cbroad front\u201d opposition. Ideas for establishing a \u201ctemporary government\u201d headed by Bitar were proposed, likely prompting Hafez al-Assad to assassinate him in Paris on July 21, 1980.<\/p>\n
Although the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Political Bureau) in June 1980 included the possibility of forming a (democratic\u2013Islamic\u2013popular alliance) among potential future options, by summer 1980, opinions within the party and Dr. Jamal al-Atassi suggested that the balance of power had begun to shift in favor of the regime since April 1980, unlike the situation in March. This required a new policy from the party and the Gathering, including criticizing Islamist violence to avoid security crackdowns. This was the focus of the Central Committee meeting in early September, where Riyad was among the minority advocating to maintain the existing policy. Instructions were sent to local party branches and university organizations to consult their members on divergent opinions for a decision at the party\u2019s general congress scheduled for December 1980. However, the security campaign in October halted this process.<\/p>\n
Despite the arrests\u2014including Riyad al-Turk, Dr. Fawwaz, Omar Qashash, and hundreds of party leaders, cadres, and members\u2014the idea of a \u201cbroad front\u201d remained on the party\u2019s agenda and in its newspaper well into the mid-1980s. When the National Liberation Front of Syria formed in March 1982, Ahmed Mahfal favored joining it, which included the Muslim Brotherhood and Iraqi Ba\u2019athists, but the party\u2019s majority leadership preferred to remain in the Gathering amid new political balances following the defeat of the armed Islamist opposition in Hama in February 1982, prioritizing the safety of imprisoned party members. When Iraq felt empowered after the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 and began supporting General Michel Aoun\u2019s military government in Lebanon (September 1988\u2013October 1990) against Damascus, Saddam Hussein considered forming a new coalition of the Syrian opposition. The dispute between Ahmed Mahfal and the secret leadership in Damascus over the \u201cbroad front\u201d led to the dissolution of the party\u2019s external organization in 1989, with the Gathering faction prevailing over the broad front faction. Eventually, the party leadership accepted the April 1998 document, authored by Jamal al-Atassi, Abdullah Huwsha, and Michel Kilo, proposing the unification of National Democratic Gathering parties into a single political movement while temporarily maintaining the organizational independence of the Gathering\u2019s factions\u2014a proposal rejected by the majority of the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau) members, supported by Riyad al-Turk who was released from prison on May 30, 1998, contributing to the failure of the project.<\/p>\n
Riyad al-Turk\u2019s rationale for rejecting the April 1998 unification document was the indication of Hafez al-Assad\u2019s imminent death and the Gathering\u2019s inability to meet the upcoming phase alone. He emphasized the need for a broad front including democrats, Islamists, and Kurdish parties. Since 1999, he opened channels with the Muslim Brotherhood\u2019s Supreme Guide Ali Sadr al-Din al-Bayanuni, resulting in orientations toward adopting democratic concepts in the Brotherhood\u2019s rhetoric, as reflected in the \u201cCode of Honor\u201d document issued in May 2001. This paved the way for the Brotherhood\u2019s and Kurdish parties\u2019 engagement with the Gathering in joint frameworks beginning with the London opposition conference in August 2002 and then the \u201cDamascus Declaration\u201d in October 2005.<\/p>\n
The \u201cDamascus Declaration\u201d was the first fruit of efforts started by Riyad al-Turk in March 1980 toward forming a broad front for the Syrian opposition. The second was the National Council in 2011, and the third was the National Coalition in 2012. These three entities, built on a wide-ranging alliance of Islamist, leftist, liberal, and Kurdish nationalist factions, aimed to establish a suitable coordination body for the opposition at political moments when its members estimated the Syrian regime was on the verge of collapse. The 2005 assessment was based on the U.S. dispute with Bashar al-Assad following the 2003 Iraq invasion and 2005 Lebanon events, expecting a domino effect to link Damascus with Baghdad and Beirut as part of the \u201cWestern winds\u201d trajectory. The 2011 and 2012 estimates predicted Bashar al-Assad would follow the fate of Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, Muammar Gaddafi, and Ali Abdullah Saleh.<\/p>\n
None of these predictions materialized. Many who joined the Damascus Declaration from Arab nationalists and Marxists admitted to signing without reading it, as it was mainly drafted by al-Turk and al-Bayanuni in July 2005 during their meeting in London. They did not raise disputes with al-Turk by demanding a stance against the American project in the region until they later realized the U.S. was in decline vis-\u00e0-vis Iran\u2019s regional influence following the 2006 July War. This led al-Turk and his allies to remove them in the General Secretariat elections of the Declaration in December 2007. Meanwhile, these factions shared al-Turk\u2019s expectation of the regime\u2019s imminent fall in 2005 and disregarded the founding document so long as \u201cthe goal would be achieved\u201d and \u201cthe means were less important.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this context, it is worth noting an attempt in September 2011 in Doha to form a new broad front encompassing the Coordination Body, Damascus Declaration, and Muslim Brotherhood, which was thwarted by the Coordination Body\u2019s Executive Office demanding that the document brought from Doha to Damascus include demands for (rejection of violence from any party, rejection of foreign military intervention, rejection of sectarianism, and finding a just solution for the Kurdish issue in Syria). This caused the Brotherhood and the Declaration to move alone toward forming the National Coalition in Istanbul the following month, mistakenly believing they would share Bashar al-Assad\u2019s fate, similar to the Transitional National Council with Gaddafi, who fled Tripoli on August 23, 2011, and was killed two months later in Sirte.<\/p>\n
In an interview with Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper on September 2, 2018, after leaving Syria, Riyad al-Turk admitted: \u201cWe went through an experience where the Islamist political current was one of the main reasons for failure,\u201d though he never acknowledged the failure of the broad front concept in principle, which he himself had founded and nurtured.<\/p>\n
Now, one must recall what Khomeini and Khamenei did with Kiwanouri (imprisonment), Rajavi and Sanjabi (exile), and Qasimlo (assassination). The bigger question remains: will Damascus, after December 8, 2024, repeat Tehran\u2019s experience after February 11, 1979?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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