Corrective Movement (Syria)
The Corrective Movement (Arabic: الحركة التصحيحية, romanized: al-Ḥarakah al-Taṣḥīḥīyya), also referred to as the Corrective Revolution or 1970 coup, was a bloodless coup d'état led by General Hafez al-Assad on 13 November 1970 in Syria.[1] Assad proclaimed to sustain and improve the "nationalist socialist line" of the state and the Ba'ath party.[2] Ba'ath party adopted an ideological revision, absolving itself of Salah Jadid's doctrine of exporting revolutions. The new doctrine placed emphasis on defeating Israel, by developing the Syrian military with the support of the Soviet Union.[3] Assad would rule Syria until his death in 2000, after which he was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad.
Events[edit]
Al-Assad started planning to seize power shortly after the failed Syrian military intervention in the Black September crisis in Jordan.[4] While Al-Assad had been in de facto command of Syrian politics since 1969, Salah Jadid and his supporters still held all the formal trappings of power.[4] After attending Gamal Abdel Nasser's funeral, Al-Assad returned to Syria to attend the Emergency National Congress held on 30 October 1970.[4] At the congress, Al-Assad was condemned by Jadid and his supporters, who formed the majority of the party delegates.[4] However, before attending the congress, Al-Assad had ordered troops loyal to him to surround the building in which the congress was held.[4] Criticism of Al-Assad's political position continued, but with Assad's troops surrounding the building, the majority of delegates knew that they had lost the battle.[4] Assad and Mustafa Tlass were stripped of their government posts during the congress, although this move had little practical influence.[4]
When the National Congress broke up on 12 November 1970, Al-Assad ordered loyalists to arrest the leading members of Jadid's government.[5] While many leading middle men were offered posts in Syria's embassies abroad, Jadid refused, telling Assad, "If I ever take power you will be dragged through the streets until you die."[5] In response, Assad imprisoned Jadid, who spent the rest of his life at Mezze prison.[5] There were no fatalities, and the country remained calm following the coup.[5] The only proof to the outside world that something was amiss was the fact that official dailies, radio, and, television stations either stopped publishing or were off the air.[5] A Temporary Regional Command was established shortly after, and on 16 November 1970, the new government published its first decree.[5]
Aftermath[edit]
1971 Party Purges[edit]
Assad's faction, which was far smaller than the pro-Jadid faction, began recruiting Aflaqites to top positions to cement their power.[6] Assad appealed directly to Michel Aflaq's sympathizers by stating: "Let us rebuild together and if we fail our heads will all be on the block together".[6] An estimated 2,000 people responded to Assad's invitation, among them were Georges Saddiqni, a party ideologist, and Shakir al-Fahham, one of the secretaries of the Ba'ath Party's founding congress in 1947.[7]
However, despite trying to strengthen his hold on the party, at a 1970 Regional Command meeting, its members opposed Assad's motion to appoint a figurehead to lead the party. As a result, Assad went on to establish a separate power base apart from the party.[8] Suspecting sympathisers of the Old Guard as a threat to his power, Hafez al-Assad carried out a purge in 1971, rounding up hundreds of party members and conducted a showtrial against Michel Aflaq, former Syrian President Amin al-Hafiz and numerous Baathists. Aflaq, Amin and three Baath leaders were sentenced to death via absentia, while ninety-nine party members were imprisoned on accusations of collaboration with the Iraqi Ba'ath. Leaders of the Old Guard like Aflaq and Amin al-Hafiz had found refuge in Baghdad, following the 1968 Baathist seizure of power in Iraq. The purges erased all remaining influence of Alaqists within the Syrian Baath party.[9]
Legacy[edit]
The policies implemented by Hafiz al-Assad following his consolidation of power significantly transformed the Baath party and state. Syria's 1973 constitution re-inforced the "leading role" of the Ba'ath Party in the society and transformed the neo-Baathist revolutionary state into a personalist "Presidential Monarchy" which concentrated all power under the Syrian President. After attaining undisputed jurisdiction in the military, party and bureaucracy; Assad strengthened his grip by assigning cadres of Alawite loyalists to key posts of various state institutions. Members of Assad family became influential in various sectors of the economy, business community and Ba'athist military.[16]
When the communist governments in the Eastern Bloc collapsed, an ideological crisis within the government arose.[17] However, Assad and his supporters hit back, stating that because of the "Corrective Movement under the leadership of the warrior Hafez al-Assad", the principles of economic and political pluralism, which had been introduced "some two decades" beforehand, safeguarded the Syrian government from the possibility of collapse.[17]
Later, on 27 January 2000, Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa stated, "I am not exaggerating when I say that the Corrective Movement, which took place in 1970 under the leadership of Hafez al-Assad ... has crystallized for the first time in modern Arab history a mature and realistic pan-Arab ideology."[18]