Syria

Syria is a country in western Asia, bordered by Lebanon to the southwest, the Mediterranean to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest. Its capital and largest city is Damascus. A land of fertile plains, high mountains and deserts, Syria is home to various ethnic and religious groups, including most of the Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Mandeans, and Greeks. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Ismailis, Mandeans, Shia, Salafis, and Yezidis. Arabs are the largest ethnic group and Sunnis are the largest religious group.

Syria is a unitary republic of 14 provinces and the only country that politically supports Ba'athism. He is a member of one international organization other than the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement; he was suspended by membership in the League of Arab States in November 2011 and in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and was himself barred from membership in the Union of the Mediterranean.

The name "Syria" has historically referred to a larger region broadly synonymous with the Levant and known in Arabic as ash-Sham. The modern state includes the territories of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC. Aleppo and the capital Damascus are some of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. During the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and the capital of the province of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.

The modern Syrian state was created in the middle of the 20th century after centuries of Ottoman rule, and after a short period under the French mandate, the newly created state was the largest Arab state that arose from the Syrian provinces previously ruled by the Ottoman Empire. It gained de jure independence as a parliamentary republic on October 24, 1945, when the Syrian Republic became a founding member of the United Nations, a law that ended the former French mandate, although French troops did not leave the country until April 1946.

The post-independence period was turbulent, with numerous military coups and coup d'état attempts that shook the country from 1949 to 1971. In 1958, Syria entered into a short-term alliance with Egypt called the United Arab Republic, which was ended by the Syrian coup d'état of 1961. ... The republic was renamed the Syrian Arab Republic in late 1961 following a constitutional referendum on December 1 of that year, and was increasingly unstable until the Baathist coup d'état of 1963, after which the Baath party retained its power. From 1963 to 2011, the State of Emergency Law was in force in Syria, effectively suspending most of the constitutional measures to protect citizens.

Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in power from 1971 to 2000. Throughout his reign, Syria and the ruling Baath Party have faced condemnation and criticism for various human rights. abuses, including frequent executions of citizens and political prisoners, and massive censorship. Since March 2011, Syria has been embroiled in a multilateral civil war, in which a number of countries in the region and beyond have been involved in the military or otherwise. As a result, a number of self-proclaimed political entities emerged on Syrian territory, including the Syrian opposition, Rojava, Tahrir al-Sham and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Syria was ranked last in the Global Peace Index from 2016 to 2018, making it the most violent country in the world due to war. The conflict has killed more than 570,000 people, 7.6 million internally displaced persons (UNHCR estimate for July 2015) and more than 5 million refugees (registered with UNHCR in July 2017), making it difficult to estimate the population in recent years.