18 May 2007
Embrace democracy, Syria's
top dissident urges Assad
Khaled Yacoub Oweis
Syrian dissident Riad al-Turk urged
President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday to lead Syria on the path
to democracy or face a political
"earthquake" he said could shake
Assad's firm hold on power.
"The survival of any system is ultimately
tied to support from the people. It takes only one event," Turk told Reuters.
"An
earthquake can be avoided if Bashar
chooses the path of reconciliation, democratic change and ousting of the corrupt. It could
happen, but I don't expect it," Turk said.
At 77, Turk remains the leading opponent
of Syria's Baathist-led government,
unperturbed by more than 17
years of solitary
confinement he spent as a political prisoner.
Assad, who is poised to secure a second term through a referendum this month, has taken steps to open the economy since
succeeding his late father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000, while keeping almost intact a political system that bans
opposition.
The 41-year president clamped
down on dissent while relations with
Washington worsened over
Syria's role in Lebanon and Iraq, and its
alliance with Iran. Assad said in a recent speech that more progress was needed in curbing
corruption and making the government accountable.
Syria's
isolation from the West has
eased in recent months with Washington talking to Damascus about stabilising Iraq.
"Regimes in Syria, Egypt and Saudi
Arabia have benefited from the American
blunders in Iraq," Turk
said in an interview at his modest flat in the town of Tel north of Damascus.
EMERGENCY
LAW
Syria has been under emergency law
since the Baath Party took power in a coup four decades ago. A large number of dissidents were jailed or fled abroad. An uprising by the Muslim Brotherhood
was crushed in the 1980s.
Unlike other leftists, Turk refused to strike political deals with the elder
Assad. He was jailed and
held in solitary
confinement for 17 years. Assad
released Turk before making a rare visit to France in 1998.
Unrepentant, Turk described Syria as "kingdom of silence" and resumed his criticism
of its armed intervention
in Lebanon.
When Bashar came to power in 2000, Turk called upon
him to change Syria's political
course. He spent another 15 months in prison for leading the "Damascus Spring", a period of political debate that lasted
for around a year after Assad came to power.
Although international pressure on the Baathists has eased, and the party
retains control over education and the
media in Syria, Turk said dissidents were succeeding in spreading democratic thought.
He pointed to the Damascus Declaration, signed two years
ago by major opposition groups including
the Muslim Brotherhood, which called for free elections and a democratic constitution.
"We reject oppression but we're also against foreign
intervention. A consensus is developing
among moderate Islamists, nationalists, liberals and leftists
and others who have cast away
totalitarian thinking,"
he said.
But
Turk said nationalists and democrats were threatened by the spread of militant Islam and sectarianism after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Arab governments had also helped the
militants by focusing their
clampdown on "democratic
forces", he said.
"Where does the
ordinary citizen go?" Turk said. "He goes toward
God to save him from this
misery and he is embraced
by the clerics. When the citizen
has no option he becomes an
easy prey in the hands of the fundamentalists."
Reuters
16/5/2007