Shukri al-Quwatli

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Shukri al-Quwatli 1943
Quwatli with family in 1966

Shukri Bey al-Quwatli ( Arabic شكري القوتلي, DMG Šukrī al-Quwatlī , also Quwatlie and al-Kuwatli , French Choukri al-Kouatli , English Shukri El-Kouatli ; * October 21, 1891 in Damascus , Vilâyet Syria ; † June 30, 1967 in Beirut , Lebanon ) was a Syrian politician and President of the Syrian Republic from 1943 to 1949 and from 1955 to 1958.

Life

Schukri al-Quwatli received a university education as a civil servant in Constantinople . The son of a wealthy Arab family began his service in the Ottoman administration in Damascus. He was active early on as an activist for Arab nationalism. Even in the Ottoman Empire , Quwatli played a leading role in the Syrian underground organization al-Fatat and was imprisoned for it in 1916. After the First World War, he served as assistant to the governor of Damascus in the short-lived Kingdom of Syria under King Faisal I. However, due to the Sykes-Picot Agreement , France received the League of Nations mandate for Syria and Lebanon at the Sanremo Conference in April 1920 . Faisal I was then expelled by the French, Quwatli was sentenced to death and fled into exile, first in Egypt and later in Germany .

In 1922 he became a founding member of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress , an exile organization of Arab nationalists that campaigned for the restoration of an Arab kingdom under Hashemite leadership. Quwatli took on tasks as a functionary and fundraiser. During the uprisings in Syria from 1925 onwards, Quwatli tried to support the rebels as an exile. When the rebel leader in the country Sultan al-Atrasch stopped fighting in 1927 due to the hopeless military situation, Quwatli accused him of cowardice and demanded that the armed resistance be continued. He also fell out with this position with the pro-Hashimite Syrian-Palestinian Congress and found a new political supporter in the Saudi King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud .

Quwatli had been a member of the National Bloc , an anti-French coalition of Arab parties in Syria, since the 1930s , and rose quickly within that organization. His main goal was to break away from France. After France was occupied by German troops in 1940 and the French mandate administration sided with the Vichy regime under Marshal Philippe Pétain , Quwatli's policy of the Axis powers favored the Vichy authorities. He headed in Damascus over the coup of Rashid Ali al-Gailani in Iraq a Syrian committee that collected means for its support. British troops marched into Syria with Free French support in the Syrian-Lebanese campaign in July 1941 . Quwatli fled but soon changed his mind and was able to convince the British authorities that he was the man they would get on with. With others he led the reorganization of the National Bloc into the National Party, his coalition won the election of 1943 and he became president for the first time in the same year.

On behalf of Charles de Gaulle , the League of Nations mandate was ended and Syria was declared independent. However, France was still militarily present, which led to anti-French demonstrations and culminated in a French bombing of Damascus . After British Prime Minister Winston Churchill threatened to send troops and the United Nations asked France to withdraw, France gave in: on April 15, 1946, the last troops left the country. After a constitutional amendment in 1947, Quwatli was confirmed in office a year later.

Quwatli's funeral procession
Quwatli's tomb in the Bab al Saghir cemetery

After the crushing defeat in the Arab-Israeli war in 1948, dissatisfaction with Quwatli's policies grew. As a result of political instability and government crises, the Quwatli government was overthrown in March 1949 by a military coup led by Husni az-Za'im . Quwatli went into exile in Egypt again after a brief detention. During this time, the Syrian political system was extremely unstable. In August and December 1949 there were again military coups in Damascus. Quwatli continued to exert political influence from exile. When the People's Party was considering considering the result of an upcoming parliamentary election as a referendum on unification with Iraq , a call from Quwatli in September 1950 and the agitation of Sabri al-Asali, who was present on the spot, to trigger a strike in the bazaar of Damascus , were enough demonstrations and mass rallies.

In 1954 Quwatli became friends with the pan-Arab player Gamal Abdel Nasser in exile . He returned to Syria in 1955 and won a free election against his former Prime Minister Khalid al-Azm . In his second term in office, Quwatli pursued a foreign policy in the spirit of Arab nationalism and moved closer to Egypt and the Soviet Union. During the Suez Crisis , Quwatli broke off diplomatic relations with Great Britain and France and concluded a military agreement with the USSR. Domestically, he relied on the loyalty of the secret service chief Abdelhamid Sarradsch and the chief of staff Afif al-Bizreh, as well as on the popularity and support of Nasser. Quwatli orchestrated the United Arab Republic in 1958 and then withdrew from active politics. However, he remained present in public statements in Syria and increasingly criticized the Union and the Egyptian leadership. In particular, Quwatli rejected the land reforms implemented by the Egyptian side, which were accompanied by expropriations. He also criticized the censorship of the media and the abolition of all political parties. When a military coup in Syria put an end to the United Arab Republic in September 1961, Quwatli supported the coup. He was discussed by the coup plotters as a presidential candidate, but due to his age the idea was dropped. After the military coup of the Ba'ath Party in 1963, he fled into exile in Beirut. He died twenty days after the Six Day War on June 30, 1967. At the insistence of the Saudi monarch, he was given a state funeral in Damascus.

swell

  • Paolo Minganti, I movimenti politici arabi , Roma, Ubaldini, 1971, p. 117
  • Mirella Galletti, Storia della Siria contemporanea. Popoli, istituzioni e cultura , Bompiani, 2006
Commons : Schukri al-Quwatli  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. https://www.tellerreport.com/news/2019-12-06---shukri-al-quwatli--a-syrian-president-who-survived-the-gallows-three-times-and-stepped- down-.HJu5JlpvaH.html
  2. https://archive.islamonline.net/?p=10381
  3. Moubayed, Sami M .: Quwatli, the George Washington of Syria . Seattle, ISBN 1-61457-105-8 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  4. Sami Moubayed: Steel & Silk - Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000 , Seattle, 2006, p. 308
  5. Sami Moubayed: Steel & Silk - Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900–2000 , Seattle, 2006, p. 309
  6. ^ A b Malcolm Yapp: The Near East since the First World War. - (A history of the Near East) , Harlow 1991, p. 97
  7. ^ Patrick Seale: The Struggle for Syria. A study of Post-War Arab Politics 1945–1958 , London 1965, 2nd ed. 1986, p. 10
  8. ^ Patrick Seale: The Struggle for Syria. London 1965, 2nd ed. 1986, p. 96 f.
  9. Sami Moubayed: Steel & Silk - Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000 , Seattle, 2006, pp. 310-314