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(I have begun reading "Burning Country" by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila
Al-Shami. I find myself stepping away from the book every few pages to
look up a reference on the Internet. This is one of them.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riad_al-Turk
Al-Turk joined the Syrian Communist Party while a student. He was
imprisoned for the first time in 1952 shortly after finishing law school
for opposing the military government that came to power in a coup. He
was held for five months and tortured but never tried in court.[1] He
later wrote articles for the party newspaper, Al-Nour, and became a
leading party ideologue. He was imprisoned again in 1958 under Nasser
for opposing the merger of Syria and Egypt in the United Arab Republic
and held for sixteen months. Again he was tortured but not tried for any
crime.[1]
Turk had for some time been leading a faction within the Communist Party
that demanded a more positive view of Arab nationalism, in opposition to
Secretary-General Khalid Bakdash, who ruled the party with an iron fist.
In 1972, Bakdash decided to merge the party into the National
Progressive Front, a coalition of organizations allied with the ruling
Arab Baath Socialist Party. Along with supporters on the radical wing of
the party, Turk formed the Syrian Communist Party (Political Bureau),
consolidating a split that had been apparent since the late 1960s. The
SCP-Political Bureau initially negotiated with the government for terms
of legalization and membership in the Front. However, it later took a
strong opposition stance, especially from 1976 on after the Syrian
intervention in favour of the Maronites right-wing government in the
Lebanese Civil War. This led to repression of the party, which was
stepped up at the beginning of the 1980s when the Hafez al-Assad
government felt itself under increasing pressure from both Islamists and
the secular opposition. Al-Turk was arrested and imprisoned on 28
October 1980 and held under very difficult conditions for almost 18
years.[2] He spent most of this period in solitary confinement and
suffering regular torture. Based on interviews with al-Turk journalist
Robin Wright reports he was "locked way in a windowless underground
cell, about the length of his body or the size of a small elevator
compartment, at an intelligence headquarters." Al-Turk was "never
allowed out of his cell to exercise. Until the final months, he was not
allowed a book, newspaper, mail or anything else to keep his mind
occupied." For the first thirteen years of his imprisonment he was
allowed no communication from, or information about, his friends and
family, including his two young daughters. His "only activity was being
allowed three times a day to go to a shared toilet." He was never
allowed to use it when other prisoners were there but did scrounge the
toilet bin for discarded clothing as his own clothing was worn out.[2]
One of his few diversions was collecting grains of dark cereal he found
in the thin soup he was served in the evening and using the grains to
create pictures in his cell.[3] He suffered considerable ill-health,
including diabetes for which he was refused treatment. He was released
on 30 May 1998.
After his release in 1998, al-Turk was initially not particularly active
politically. In June 2000, however, Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad died
and his son Bashar succeeded him. This was followed by an outburst of
political debate and demands for democratic changes, known as the
Damascus Spring, and al-Turk resumed a prominent role. His statement on
al Jazeera television in August 2001 that "the dictator has died" was
seen as a direct cause of renewed repression by an angered government,
and al-Turk himself was arrested some days later on September 1, 2001,
subjected to a trial widely seen as unfair before a state security
court. In June 2002 he was sentenced to three years imprisonment for
`attempting to change the constitution by illegal means.`[4] This led to
international protests, especially given his poor health.
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