Tribes with Flags: Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria

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Charles Glass. Tribes with Flags: Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria

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Adventure and Kidnap in Greater Syria

CHARLES GLASS

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“If you study Hatay,” he said, using the Turkish name for the province, “you must look at Syria. In Syria, I think twenty-five per cent of the people are Alawi, forty-five per cent are Sunni and thirty per cent are Christian, including Armenians and Assyrians. The man who became president of Syria is Alawi. He didn’t come to power democratically. He wants to remain president. He puts Alawis in important positions, as military commanders and security police. He is afraid. Of what? Who is against him? The Muslim Brothers, the Iraqi Baath Party. Because of this opposition, twenty-five per cent of the population is not enough for him. This is why, I heard, clever young Alawis from Samandag, in the far south, are being taken to study at the university in Damascus. They study medicine or go into the military and don’t come back.” The Alawis are a dissident sect of Shiite Muslims, who live mainly in the hills along the sea between northern Lebanon and Alexandretta.

Kavak said he had been active in politics. “Before 1980, I belonged to the Social Democratic Party, the democratic left. In Turkey, the Communist Party is forbidden. This is why some people who are not social democrats, but Marxists, work in the Social Democratic Party. They work together and support each other. If you want to succeed, you have to cooperate with the communists. I did not want to. Also, with my work, I don’t have enough time.”

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