What is Syria?
A: Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a Western Asian country
located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant.
It is a unitary republic that consists of 14 what?
A: Governorates (subdivisions).
IT is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the west,
and what to the north?
A: Turkey.
Syria is boarded to the east and southeast by what
country?
A: Iraq.
What country borders Syria to the south?
A: Jordan, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest.
Cyprus lies to the west across what?
A: The Mediterranean Sea.
A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and
deserts, Syria is home to diverse what?
A: Ethnic and religious groups, including the majority Syrian Arabs, Kurds,
Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Albanians, and Greeks.
Religious groups include what?
A: Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Yazidis.
What is the capital and largest city of Syria?
A: Damascus.
What is the largest ethnic group?
A: Arabs, and Muslims are the largest religious group.
Syria is the only country that politically espouses
what?
A: The Arab nationalist ideology known as Ba'athism.
Syria is a member of what international organization
other than the United Nations?
A: The Non-Aligned Movement.
When was it suspended from the Arab League?
A: In November 2011.
When was the modern Syrian state established?
A: In the mid-20th century after centuries of Ottoman rule.
After a period as a French mandate (1923–1946), the
newly created state represented what?
A: The largest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman-ruled Syrian
provinces.
It gained de jure independence as a parliamentary
republic on 24 October 1945 when the Republic of Syria became what?
A: A founding member of the United Nations, an act which legally ended the
former French Mandate (although French troops did not leave the country
until April 1946).
The name "Syria" historically referred to what?
A: A wider region, broadly synonymous with the Levant, and known in Arabic
as al-Sham.
Aleppo and the capital city Damascus are among the
oldest what?
A: Continuously inhabited cities in the world.
In the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the
Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of what?
A: The Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.
The post-independence period was tumultuous, with many
what?
A: Military coups and coup attempts shaking the country from 1949 to 1971.
In 1958, Syria entered a brief union with Egypt called
what?
A: The United Arab Republic, which was terminated by the 1961 Syrian coup
d'état.
Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was
preceded by whom?
A: His father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1971 to 2000.
Throughout his rule, Syria and the ruling Ba'ath Party
have been condemned and criticized for what?
A: Various human rights abuses, including frequent executions of citizens
and political prisoners, and massive censorship.
Since March 2011, Syria has been embroiled in what?
A: A multi-sided civil war, with a number of countries in the region and
beyond involved militarily or otherwise.
Syria was ranked last on the Global Peace Index from
2016 to 2018, making it what?
A: The most violent country in the world due to the war.
The conflict has killed how many people?
A: More than 570,000.
