Nureddin al-Atassi

Nureddin al-Atassi

Nureddin Mustafa al-Atassi (* 1929 in Homs , Syria , † December 3, 1992 in France ; Arabic نور الدين مصطفى الأتاسي, DMG Nūr ad-Dīn Muṣṭafā al-Atāsī ) was President from 1966 to 1970 and Prime Minister of Syria from 1968 to 1970.

Life

Cairo, 1968, from left to right Presidents Boumedienne , Atassi, Arif , Nasser and al-Azhari

Al-Atassi comes from the Syrian landowning family Atassi .

Nureddin al-Atassi studied medicine at Damascus University . During his student days, he joined the Ba'ath Party around Michel Aflaq and Salah ad-Din al-Bitar . As a student, he was politically active against the military dictatorship of Adib al-Shishakli . In April 1953 he was arrested for these activities and detained in Palmyra and Damascus. He went on a hunger strike while in detention and was released in May that year. In 1954, at the beginning of the Algerian War , he joined the FLN and served there as a medic.

As a representative of the left wing of the Ba'ath party , after the break-up of the Ba'athist-Nassist coalition in August 1963 under Amin al-Hafiz, he first became Minister of the Interior, in October 1964 Vice Premier and, after Muhammad Umran's dismissal, from September 1965 to December 1965 also Vice President (since May 1964 he was a member of the Presidency Council) before he was replaced as Vice President by Shibli al-Aysami . After another left-wing coup within the party on February 25, 1966 against al-Hafiz, Atassi finally became General Secretary of the Syrian Ba'ath Party and President of Syria. In September 1967 Atassi was also elected general secretary of a Ba'ath leadership newly formed by Syria. From October 29, 1968, he was also Prime Minister, but the de facto ruler was General Salah Jadid from 1966 to 1969 .

Atassi's two most important political allies were Yusuf Zuayyin and Ibrahim Makhous , who, like Atassi's, were also physicians ("three doctors") and representatives of the left Ba'ath wing , while Nureddin's cousin Jamal al-Atassi was one of his internal party opponents. Under Atassi, Zayyen therefore mostly acted as prime minister, Makhous as deputy prime minister and foreign minister.

Salah Jadid, then Defense Minister Hafiz al-Assad and President Atassi later blamed each other for the defeat in the 1967 Six Day War . Jadid complained that Assad, despite his urging and pleading at the front, had withheld urgently needed elite troops in Damascus. Assad said he received this order directly from Atassi, who feared an internal Baath coup with the help of Iraqi allies in Syria. Atassi, however, complained that both generals did not obey the civilian head of state.

At the end of 1969, Atassi (right) negotiated with Gaddafi (center) and Nasser (left) about an alliance - a year later Atassi fell and Nasser died

After the defeat, Atassi called on the presidents of Egypt, Iraq and Algeria in September 1967 to form "Syria a unitary state of socialist Arabs", but did not find any significant support for this project at a meeting with his counterparts in Cairo in 1968. In June 1969 Atassi stated again that Syria was planning a military alliance with Iraq and Jordan, a "political union with progressive Arab states, especially with Egypt". At the same time, Iraq's President Hasan al-Bakr declared that an Iraqi-Syrian union must be the beginning of an Arab unification.

In 1970, Atassi, Jadid and Assad reached a final rift about Syria's attitude towards Black September in Jordan. After a coup dubbed a “ corrective movement ”, Atassi was replaced as president on November 18, 1970, and as premier on November 21, by the right wing of the Ba'ath Party military around Assad . Who's Who , had initially accepted an escape into Libyan exile). His supporters split under Makhous' leadership as the "Arab Socialist Democratic Baath Party" and joined the opposition democracy movement of 1980. Atassi's poor health led to his release in 1992, whereupon he went to France for (ultimately unsuccessful) medical treatment.

The civil rights activist Ali al-Atassi (* 1967) is Nureddin's son. Together with Jamal al- Atassi's daughter Suheir , he founded a democracy movement (Atassi Forum) in 2000, which was banned in 2001.

literature

• The International Who's Who 1988-89. 52nd edition, Europa Publications Limited, London 1988
• Nureddin el Atassi , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 12/1993 from March 15, 1993 (lm), in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Noureddine al-Atassi  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Short biography on rulers.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sami Moubayed: Steel an Silk Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000. Seattle, 2006, pp. 175-177
2. ↑ Der Spiegel 44/1967 of October 23, 1967: Elite spared
3. ↑ Der Spiegel 12/1969 of March 17, 1969: Death by shot in the head
4. ^ Fischer Weltalmanach '69, page 369. Frankfurt / Hamburg 1968
5. ↑ Nureddin el Atassi , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 12/1993 from March 15, 1993 (lm), in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)
6. ↑ Horst Mahr: The Baath Party - Portrait of a Pan-Arab Movement , page 111 . Olzog 1971.