Corrective movement
The Syrian Corrective Movement 1970 ( Arabic الحركة التصحيحية, DMG al-ḥaraka at-taṣḥīḥīya ), also known as the Corrective Revolution , was the coup d'état of the military-pragmatic faction within the Ba'ath government of Syria on November 13, 1970, which brought Hafiz al-Assad to power.
background
As a member of the Air Force , Hafiz al-Assad was a supporter of the March 8 revolution when a group of officers overthrew the government of the Syrian Republic in 1963 .
In 1966 another coup took place, an intra-party conflict in which the “old guard” of the Arab-socialist Ba'ath party was overthrown. Assad's personal ambitions, denominational factionalism and ideological differences led to a continuous struggle within the party. Many members of the Ba'ath Military Committee fled or were removed from their offices, so that in the end only two main factions remained, a "left" one around Salah Jadid and one "pragmatic" one around Hafiz al-Assad.
As Defense Minister in the Six Day War in 1967, Hafiz al-Assad and Chief of Staff Jadid were responsible for the defeat.
When Jadid sent the 5th Infantry Division , composed of the Palestinian Liberation Army and other units, to Jordan in 1970 to help the Palestinians against King Hussein , al-Assad refused to provide air support to the Syrian ground forces, whereupon the Syrian troops had to retreat.
Revolution 1970
The subsequent corrective movement in 1970 was directed against the dominant left faction of the Ba'ath Party and provoked by what Assad and his supporters called “adventurous and irresponsible foreign policy”, including the Syrian intervention in the Black September conflict in Jordan. As a result of this coup, the de facto ruler Salah Jadid and his president Nureddin al-Atassi were overthrown and the party " purged ". This revolution changed Syria's social and political structures. Even if Assad later tried hard to avoid the impression that there was now a minority rule of the Alawites , the religious community to which both Jadid and himself belonged, Alawites occupied important positions in many areas of public life in the years that followed. The government was "liberated" from Christian , Druze and Ismaili rivals. Assad-loyal Sunnis, including Ahmed al-Chatib and Mustafa Tlass , also advanced.
The coup, perceived by the public as a de facto takeover of Assad, met with little resistance. The previous regime had only a small number of organized supporters behind it. Police-state repression was deliberately used wherever they wanted to practice public protest. The Baath leadership brought the union leadership to their line by arresting an unpopular member. A purge against Assad's opponents followed in the unions. If Assad also rhetorically propagated the restructuring of society towards socialism , he was seen by the population as a moderate element of the Baathre regime in terms of domestic and economic policy. Merchants, industrial entrepreneurs and the middle class hoped that Assad would gain greater economic freedom. In the months after he came to power, Assad increased the salaries of state employees, lifted import barriers and lowered the prices of state- subsidized food. In February 1971 he had a parliament elected in which the Nassist parties and the Syrian Communist Party were also represented. In March 1971, Assad formalized his claim to leadership and, according to Syrian sources, became President of Syria through a plebiscite with 99.5% approval.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Patrick Seale: Hafez al-Assad. In: Guardian.co.uk. June 15, 2000, accessed March 19, 2011 .
- ^ A b John F. Devlin: Syria: modern state in an ancient land . Westview Press, Boulder 1983, ISBN 0-86531-185-4 , pp. 55 .
- ↑ Michael Kerr, Craig Larkin: The 'Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant ", 2015, Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd., ISBN 978-1849043991
- ↑ Volker Perthes: State and Society in Syria , Hamburg, 1990, pp. 70–71