Salah ad-Din al-Bitar

Salah ad-Din al-Bitar (1966)

Bitar (left) with President Louai al-Atassi at Nasser's in Cairo in 1963

Salah ad-Din al-Bitar ( Arabic صلاح الدين البيطار, DMG Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn al-Bīṭār ; * 1912 in Damascus ; † July 21, 1980 in Paris ) was Syrian Prime Minister, pan-Arab nationalist and thought leader of Baathism . He was a Sunni Muslim .

Live and act

Salah ad-Din al-Bitar's family belonged to the middle class of his country. He developed into an Arab nationalist early on and thought about driving the colonial power France out of the League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon .

His life and activities are closely intertwined with those of Michel Aflaq . After graduating from school in Damascus, he went with Aflaq to the Sorbonne in Paris , where he studied physics . When he returned from France in 1932 , he taught in state schools. Both men brought their nationalist ideas into the classroom and were therefore dismissed after repeated admonitions and were financially dependent on their families during this time.

His friendship with Aflaq meant that he was more and more involved in politics. In 1943 he ran unsuccessfully for the Syrian parliament as a deputy from Damascus. In 1946 he became editor-in-chief of the party newspaper al-Baath . In 1947 he was together with Michel Aflaq founder of the Ba'ath Party , which merged with Akram al-Haurani's Socialist Party to form the Socialist Arab Bath Party in 1952 .

He was captured several times during his political activities: in 1945 during the Quwatli government, in 1949 by Zaim, and in 1952 and 1954 by Shishakli . In 1954 he ran - this time successfully - for parliament as representative of Damascus. In 1956 he became foreign minister and remained so until the formation of the United Arab Republic in 1958. In 1957 he gained international recognition as head of the Syrian delegation to the UN .

After the Baath Party came to power in 1963, Bitar was initially proposed as president by the party vice- president Shibli al-Aysami , but the coup officers agreed on Louai al-Atassi instead .

Bitar became Prime Minister of Syria several times in 1963, 1964 and early 1966 in rivalry with Yusuf Zuayyin . As prime minister he pursued the goal of enforcing the one-party state of the Baath by banning the free press and established political parties. In terms of economic policy, Bitar tried to establish a socialist economic system through nationalizations and expropriations.

Bitar's claim to political power finally fell victim to internal party purges (“corrective movements”) of a left alliance of Druze and Alawite military (General Salah Jadid ) in the spring of 1966 , which led to the break between the Syrian and Iraqi Baath parties and initially forced Bitar into exile in Lebanon . After another " corrective movement " by Lieutenant General Hafiz al-Assad , who became Prime Minister and Defense Minister on November 23, 1970, Bitar returned to Damascus in 1970, but only a few months later he went into exile in Paris, where he went on July 21 Died in an assassination attempt in 1980. Akram al-Haurani then accused the Syrian regime of being behind the murder.

literature

• Itamar Rabinovich : Syria under the Baʻth, 1963-66, the Army Party symbiosis , page 57ff. Tel Aviv 1972

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sami Moubayed: Steel an Silk - Men an Women who shaped Syria 1900-2000 , Seattle, 2006, pp. 212-215

Web links

Commons : Salah ad-Din al-Bitar  - collection of images, videos and audio files