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The Print
a day ago
- Politics
- The Print
Can Syria's tiny Druze minority survive West Asia's new storms? There's little hope
Little imagination is needed to understand what's driving the violence in Syria. Following the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad's dystopic regime, more than 1,000 members of his Alevi community were slaughtered in their coastal redoubts by government forces and Islamist militia. In one case, journalist Maggie Michael reported , a young man's heart was cut out of his body. His name was listed among 60 dead that included his cousins and neighbours, and six children. Even as Druze tribesmen poured in to reinforce their clan, in the summer of 1925, a French column led by General Roger Michaud was ambushed before the gates of Sweida and routed. A French officer committed suicide, historian Philip Khoury records . The first shots emerged from the bowels of the great volcanic mountain of Tell Qeni. They were likely aimed with more hope than military focus at the French Nieuport-Delage NiD.29 C.1 fighter plane, which had been surveilling Druze positions on Jabal al-Druze – the great mountain redoubt of the Druze community. The great rebellion had begun, even if the pilots hadn't noticed it. Two days later, the Druze leader Sultan al-Atrash occupied the region's second town, Salkhad, and slaughtered a column of 166 French colonial troops, laying siege to the capital at Sweida. For much of their history, the Druze have fought mainly to be left alone in their mountain redoubts—allying with Israel, or Syria, or whichever power might safeguard their interests. In 2018, more than 200 Druze were killed in concentrated attacks by Islamic State suicide bombers, as retaliation for their cooperation with the regime against the jihadists. Led by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, Druze forces have been savagely expelling Bedouin tribes from the region, following a kidnapping of a trader on the road to Damascus. There have been arguments over incendiary religious messages spread over social media. The bigger story is this, however: The collapse of the state in Syria has opened the way for genocidal ethnic-religious warfare—and the Druze want to make sure they are not on the losing end. The fighting has been intense. Entire neighbourhoods have been gutted, journalists Santiago Montag and Hussam Hammoud have reported, while Sweida's main hospital was overrun by gunmen who slaughtered its patients. And yet, the fighting is showing no signs of ending. There is a saying that the Druze like telling about themselves. As historian William Miles writes: 'When a fortune comes their way, a Christian would build a huge mansion, a Muslim would go to Mecca on pilgrimage, and a Druze? A Druze would simply buy more weapons.' Lights in the landscape Even though Indians are used to seeing West Asia as one uninterrupted wash of Islam, the reality is more complex: Like all other parts of the world, liminal communities, perched on the edge of the hegemonic faiths, light up the landscape. The Druze do not self-describe as Muslims, though their theology shares elements of Islam. The community believes in Tawhid – the unity of the divine and the human – sees time as unfolding in eternal cycles, and believes that the soul of a Druze who has died immediately reincarnates in the body of another. Loosely linked to the Ismaili offshoot of the Shia sect, the Druze have their holy text, the Rasail al-Hikma, or Epistles of Wisdom, although the Quran is also part of their theological framework. Tight ethnic and religious bonds hold the community together. The demographer Nissim Dana records that, even in relatively liberal Israel, there were just 145 cases of conversion recorded from 1952 to 2009, mainly to enable marriage to non-Druze spouses. The community is reputed to number some 1 million people, overwhelmingly concentrated in Syria, but with pockets in Lebanon and Israel. For generations, the Druze proved willing to take extraordinary risks to protect their fragile autonomy. Late in 1895, for example, Syria's Ottoman government was presented with an opportunity to punish the Druze, after quarrels broke out with their Muslim neighbours. Together with Kurds, Bedouins, and Circassians, Ottoman troops burned down the Druze village of Majdal Shams. Though the Ottoman soldiers outnumbered the Druze two-and-a-half to one, historian Shakeeb Salih writes, they were unable to subdue the uprising. An arrangement involving amnesties and cash compensation was eventually arrived at. The inexorable forces of the market, though, brought about significant changes in the outlook of the Druze by 1925. According to Salih, the merchants and moneylenders of Damascus became frequent visitors to Jabal al-Druze and Hawran, where they financed the cultivation of crops such as gram and cereals. For their part, Druze elites began to winter in Damascus, imbibing its culture and integrating into its political milieu. Following the 1925 revolt, Khoury writes, the Druze case became a template for other nationalist movements breaking out across the Middle East, eventually leading to the independence of Syria and Lebanon. Also read: Afghanistan is starving—and its farmers are fighting to save the poppy The power game Like many post-colonial states, the scholar Joshua Landis writes, independent Syria tried to stamp its authority on the Druze brutally from 1946. The four-year rule of Adib Shishakli, from December 1949 to February 1954, resulted in the crushing of Druze local leadership. 'A new form of Druze communal consciousness took root among Druze civilian politicians and, most importantly, among Druze military officers as a result,' Landis notes. Shishkali was eventually overthrown in a coup d'etat, in which Druze officers played a key role. The Druze used their position not only to seek economic privileges from Damascus, but also to gain recognition for the wide-ranging autonomy they had enjoyed under the French. This battle was not easily won, though. The government hit back, rolling back subsidies, choking the lucrative smuggling routes into Jordan, and most importantly, destroying the profitable hashish trade. Tribal leaders such as Sultan Pasha al-Atrash found their influence diminished, just as a new, Left-leaning generation of Druze emerged. Faced with vicious ethnopolitical propaganda and economic decline, the Druze found other means to act. In 1953, Druze officers Colonel Amin Abu Asaf and Captain Mohammed al-Atrash were plotting a coup. The army, thus, became a stage for the making and unmaking of power, with Alevi, Kurds, Christians, and Druze all competing to protect their interests against the majority. Also read: What's behind Israel's strikes in Syria & who are the 'Druze' that Netanyahu has vowed to protect A grim future? For the Druze, support from Israel—where they constitute a recognised official minority—is now critical. As historian Laila Parsons notes, early Jewish Agency officials operating in Palestine saw the benefits of developing ties to local minorities, and Itzhak Ben Tzvi—later to become Israel's second president—cultivated ties with the Druze. For the most part, the Druze stayed neutral in the Arab revolt of 1936-1939. The defeat of a small Druze detachment fighting the Israeli defence forces near the settlement of Ramat-Yohanan, wrote Parsons, stilled Druze desire to interject themselves in the conflict. In the war of 1947-1948, the Druze emerged better off than their Palestinian Christian and Muslim neighbours. They now had the choice of living as minorities in a Jewish state or as minorities in an Arab state. For most Druze, the choice was simple. For the Druze left in Syria and Lebanon, though, the future likely looks very different. Israeli air power was committed to protect Sweida from Bedouin tribes attacking the Druze. Still, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is an ally of the United States and is seen as key to the suppression of the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Israeli support for Druze defiance cannot, therefore, be taken for granted in the future. Even more critically, the Druze have opened themselves up to a long war with the Bedouin tribes and their Islamist supporters within Syria's new regime. Looking into the fires raging in Syria, it's hard not to see only darkness: The ethnoreligious conflicts that the Ba'ath state managed—and occasionally crushed—have returned to the centre stage of political life. The acquisition of power again involves access to guns and weapons, not political legitimacy. The genuinely federal structures that Syria's minorities demanded during their march to independence could offer a way forward. But there's little hope that a society in which jihadists see themselves as victorious will be prepared to concede it. The author is Contributing Editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
The Print
02-07-2025
- Politics
- The Print
Turkey's looking more like Pakistan every day. Blasphemy-obsessed, imprisoned by hatred
Though no one was killed in the violence, it is becoming clear that Turkey, once the progressive cultural powerhouse of the Middle East, is starting to look a little more like Pakistan each week. The country's septuagenarian ruler, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is even working to dismantle the constitution , which mandates that 'sacred religious feelings shall absolutely not be involved in state affairs and politics as required by the principle of secularism'. Earlier this week, police in Istanbul fired rubber bullets and tear gas into a mob seeking to attack a bar where staff of the magazine had retreated after the supposedly blasphemous cartoon went to print. The country's interior minister Ali Yerlikaya has promised legal action against the cartoonist, graphic designer, and editors of LeMan , vowing that 'these shameless individuals will be held accountable before the law'. The inferno lies below, a landscape made up of bombs, fire, and rubble. Their wings elevating them above the carnage, two angels—one bearing the name of the Prophet of Islam and the other of the Israelites—wish each other peace. The cartoon, published in the Turkish satirical magazine LeMan , is open to readings. Is it that those condemned to live in war can only discover their shared humanity after being liberated from life? Alternately, is it that the angels have abandoned their followers on earth, learning that piety cannot tame the savagery of the faithful? Extreme religious violence isn't unknown in Turkey. Thirty-seven people were burned to death in 1993 after mobs attacked a cultural festival of the Alevi sect, attended among others by the Turkish translator of Salman Rushdie's book, The Satanic Verses. The proscription of books, arrests of opposition leaders, and the repression of ethnic minorities have been an ugly feature of Turkey's republic. However, its social and cultural life remains highly sophisticated and liberal, and not just by the standards of the grim Middle East despotisms. Erdoğan's true legacy, the violence in Istanbul suggests, might be demolishing the foundations on which Turkey's pluralism has rested. Decline of the republic Kemal Atatürk's epoch-defining construction of republican Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire aimed to create a new civilisation that could negotiate the industrial world. The religious orders that wielded enormous influence in the imperial era were closed down in 1925. Far-reaching reforms were introduced on how men and women ought to dress, including the rejection of the traditional Fez cap and encouraging women to give up the Peçe (headscarf) and Çarşaf (a loose-fitting outer garment). In 1928, the Latin alphabet replaced the Arabic script, a tool to demolish the power of the clerical class. The same year, Islam was removed as the state religion. For Atatürk, it seemed that the reconstruction of Islam itself was necessary. So he established the Presidency of Religious Affairs to oversee religious affairs. The clergy were transformed into state employees, responsible for delivering sermons dictated by the authorities. Imams were ordered to allow musical instruments into mosques, and failing that, were provided with gramophones and records. Even the wearing of shoes inside mosques was encouraged. This state-enforced religion, scholar Nevzet Çelik noted in a thoughtful essay, brought about enormous transformation—but it also stifled the organic evolution of civic life and marked secularism with the taint of authoritarianism. As Atatürk's legacy faded, and Turkey became more shaped by Cold War anticommunism, religion became a language of protest for the peasantry and bourgeoisie. According to historian David Tonge, from 1980 onward, things began to come to a head. The faltering economy fed communal tensions. Fifty died in massacres in Çorum, where Turkish ultranationalists attacked Alevis. As Left-wing groups battled fascists on the streets, the fights claimed dozens of lives every day. The opposition politician Necmettin Erbakan used Islam to attack Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, calling for Turkey to be made an Islamic State. The military stepped in to end the chaos: Turkey woke up on 12 September 1980 to find itself under military rule. To some, this seemed just a passing phase. The country had, after all, been subjected to coups in 1960 and 1971. The Generals hadn't even troubled themselves to send out the tanks the second time, simply sending a memorandum to the parliament. Also read: Pakistan suffers violence of its own making. West's refusal to learn is even more tragic A change of destiny Led by General Kenan Evren, the National Security Council realised it needed to come to terms with the social forces sweeping Turkey. Though secularism continued to be promoted as a guiding principle, religious education was reintroduced in primary and secondary schools. The government of Prime Minister Turgut Özal, which was elected in 1983, also instrumentalised religion. His education minister Vehbi Dinçerler banned the teaching of evolution and instructed clerical schools to teach that Turks had been 'leaders in the rise and dissemination of Islam throughout the world'. Later, Özal became the first Prime Minister of Turkey to make the Hajj pilgrimage while in office, leading a delegation of several hundred Members of Parliament and senior civil servants. The opposition media, Tonge writes, savaged Özal, publishing pictures of him in his white, ritual ihram towels, contrasted with his wife in a cocktail dress, smoking one of her trademark cigars. Erbakan's rise to power in 1996 marked a further shift in political direction away from secularism. His first trip abroad was to Tehran, in defiance of the United States, and then to Libya. He also tried to launch a D8 group of Muslim nations, as an alternative to the West's G7 group of economically developed countries. The ban on female civil servants wearing the headscarf was removed. The Generals, concerned, presented Erbakan with 18 directives, 10 of which concerned the defence of secularism. Then, in April, the military declared reactionary Islam to be more dangerous to Turkey than Kurdish secessionists, or even wars. Television stations, radio broadcasters, and newspapers considered sympathetic to the Islamists were shut down. Also read: Chinese J-20 isn't just a fighter jet—it's a signal to US, Japan and India European departure From 1999, the European Union sought to stabilise its eastern frontiers by drawing Turkey into the transnational body. The demands for civil liberties and freedoms that were now placed on Turkey's military gutted the institution. Led by Erdoğan, the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) or Justice and Development Party, was founded in 2001, bringing together a disparate coalition of Islamists. To the world, however, the AKP presented itself as a pro-West, reformist, moderate, and neoliberal party. Europe and the United States bought the story. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared that the AKP was 'a government dedicated to pulling Turkey westward toward Europe'. President Barack Obama gushed about 'a model partnership' with Turkey. Erdoğan has also used the same language about Trump. The practice of AKP power, however, proved to be at odds with this image. For one, as the party faced growing competition from its rivals, it made increasing use of religion. 'Those with greater commitments to liberal democratic norms carried greater weight at the outset, only to lose their power and influence to electoralists,' political scientist Sebnem Gumuscu wrote in her book, Democracy or Authoritarianism. The signs of Erdoğan's commitment to Islamism became increasingly evident. The new school curriculum introduced in 2017 led to the removal of the theory of evolution and increased emphasis on religious values. The word 'jihad' was included as an essential part of Islam. And then, a year short of the centennial of the founding of the republic, he opened the Hagia Sofiya church for Islamic prayers, reversing Atatürk's decision to turn it into a museum, equally shared between the country's faiths. Erdoğan's beliefs are increasingly evident beyond Turkey's borders, too. The new regime in Syria has embraced Sharia as the basis of its laws, just as Erdoğan seeks in his homeland. He has also been accused of complicity in the killings of religious minorities. The rioting over the LeMan cartoon signals the rise of Turkey, diminished by its obsession with greatness, but a prisoner of resentment and hatred. This smaller, meaner Turkey, of the blasphemy rioter and sectarian killer, will be Erdoğan's legacy. Praveen Swami is Contributing Editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal. (Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)
Voice of America
11-03-2025
- Politics
- Voice of America
VOA Kurdish: In Kobani, people protest Alevi massacres, Turkish bombings
In Kobani, Syria, people protested the massacres of Alevi on the Syrian coast, coinciding with Turkish bombings of the Tishrin Dam and Qerqozaq bridge. This violence continued despite a recent agreement to integrate Kurdish forces into Syria's transitional government, questioning the agreement's ability to end the conflict. Click here for the full TV story in Kurdish.
