"The whole of Syria is as if it has come out of a dungeon"

In Syria, the 13-year knot that had affected the whole world was untied in 13 days. This is the first impression of the scene that has emerged. The joy of deliverance that the nation has experienced after the Assad regime in fact sufficiently tells under what oppression and despotism this people has been for 61 years. But the cries about what went on here had long since become public knowledge anyway. The millions of people who were forced to flee their country and take refuge in other countries were cries that sufficiently reflected what was going on there. The world's reaction to these cries was, as always, perhaps in the beginning everyone seemed a little interested, indeed quite interested, but in time got used to what was going on. When oppression, whatever its dimensions, is not prevented, it acquires a familiarity among people over time. So let no one be in any doubt: everyone who stayed silent about the inhuman slaughters that took place here bears responsibility. We will have time to discuss these, God willing.

Now let us recount what we witnessed during our time in Syria. Those who wonder about the secret of how the revolutionaries liberated cities, towns and villages one by one and at great speed from Assad's despotism need only look at the picture of savagery that emerged in Sednaya and the other prisons. For years this people lived under great pressure under the threat of these dungeons. There is no one in Syria who does not know of the existence of these prisons and what went on in them. So the moment a real possibility of being rid of Assad appeared, it was inevitable that the whole people would join the revolutionaries' ranks en masse.

The exhilaration at the celebrations of very young children, youths, high school and university students in Hamidiyeh Square in Damascus is probably an experience lived for the first time in Syria. These young people may well have taken part before in some staged official celebrations under the regime's compulsion, but for the first time they are gathering and celebrating here of their own will, to live a real joy.

When we visited the Baath Party headquarters in Aleppo, they showed us through the window how people had begun to stroll about the party building at ease. Before, walking past this party on foot would have taken heart, says an Aleppo tradesman. Watching the young people gathered in clusters in a large park overlooked by the party headquarters hanging out among themselves, the same reminder: until a week ago, seeing this scene here would have been impossible.

Then came the real great diagnosis: Looking at the images of the prison and the people rescued from there, do not think that only they were let out of prison. The whole of the Syrian people was in the dungeon; with the revolution, all of Syria came out of prison. That is why, from the first day, the squares are overflowing with people celebrating. Above all there is an air of freedom that the young are tasting for the first time and enjoying.

In fact, in the process that began on 27 November, the intention or plan at the outset was not to obtain such a result across the whole of Syria. Once they set out, the revolution is as if it was put together along the way. The regime, which had become stable for years and had established its own autonomous administration in and around Idlib, had been seized by the delusion that it could eliminate the opposition recently and had massed a large buildup here. The first aim of the operation undertaken, in the name of "repelling aggression," was to sweep the regime elements out of Idlib and, simultaneously, an operation toward Aleppo.

The opposition's taking over the administration of Aleppo, which had long been on the agenda and which we have been trying to express in the column for two years, would in fact have been a relatively temporary but very good solution both for Turkey and for all Syrians. Probably the revolutionaries too, at the outset, had focused on this aim with this consideration. However, their behavior toward the people when they entered Aleppo, their approach and the messages they gave opened the way not only in Aleppo but in all subsequent cities for the people's participation in the revolutionary process with a domino effect. In Hama, Homs, the south of Idlib and all the towns around it, Baath regime soldiers found the promise that those who laid down their weapons and took off their uniforms would not be touched sufficiently trustworthy thanks to this, and laid down their weapons. In this way, Damascus was reached in a relatively much less bloody manner.

In all the cities we went to, beginning with Aleppo, we met many Syrians we knew from Turkey. "When did you manage to get here?" we ask. "We couldn't contain ourselves, we came at once, we met relatives we hadn't seen for 13 years, we checked our homes," most say. But all of them have on their faces a tremendous happiness and excitement that gives joy even to see. This is an utterly innocent excitement. It cannot be compared to the triumphal joy of some who have come to rule or occupy a place. The innocent joy of people forcibly, oppressively expelled from their homeland returning to their own homes as victors cannot be compared to any other reunion. So rightful, so legitimate and so much a conquest.

Aleppo is in itself a great cradle of civilization. From here every kind of raw material for the founding of very great civilizations exists. These raw materials have been suppressed for a full century. So that nothing would come out of here, nothing new would emanate from here, it was kept under control, as it were, by the most repulsive, the most despicable regime the world could witness. Even in Ottoman times Aleppo was one of the greatest centers of trade and culture. Its population too is like a nucleus of Turkey's overall demographic composition. With its Turkmen, Arab, Kurd and Armenian together, it nurtures all the cultural diversity a civilization needs.

Who can hold back an Aleppo now freed from its chains, says an academic who studied in Turkey and has just been reunited with his family here from Turkey.

Syria has in fact every kind of material to become a strong and rich country. Its land is extremely suited to agriculture, its people as hardworking as can be. But now a far greater social capital has been added to all of this. There is a great social energy that will be produced by the attainment of freedom by those who stayed in their country, paying prices and struggling against despotism. Moreover, the social capital that the Syrian diaspora, who were forced to live abroad as refugees, will create by returning to their homes opens an important field in which Syria can enter the stage of history beyond even its reconstruction.