Since former regime leader Bashar Assad decided to confront the Syrian people’s peaceful protests with bullets, millions of Syrians have been forced to leave their homeland. The vast majority of them settled in Türkiye, where they received a welcome that can, at the very least, be described as compassionate. In Türkiye, Syrians heard words from Turks that seemed almost too extraordinary to be true. I mean: When was the last time people heard a sentence such as: “You are the muhajirun (the earliest Muslims who migrated from Mecca to Medina with the Prophet Muhammad), and we are the Ansar (native citizens of Medina, who welcomed and supported the Prophet Muhammad)”?
This was in addition to the Turkish government’s official stance toward the Assad regime and its support for the Syrian opposition. For this reason, Assad saw President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a bitter and determined adversary.
On the night of the failed coup attempt in Türkiye, the Syrian regime, through all its military and media apparatuses, cheered for the putschists and displayed an ugly sense of Schadenfreude over what was happening in the neighboring country.
Syrians experienced that night as the Turks did. They feared for democracy as Turks feared; they prayed to God for victory as Turks did, and some of them even took to the streets to stand against the military, as I personally did.
