From al-Julani to Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian Revolution

The Syrian revolution, which ended the 61-year dark Baath regime with a clear victory, had a shock effect across the region and even on the balances of the world, and it also brought its leader forward as an entirely new political figure. Ahmed al-Sharaa, a name known for years like a mysterious legend, subject to terror warrants and even a bounty on his head, with these legends and the bounty concealing his real personality quite thoroughly, stepped onto the stage as his real self with the last days of the revolution. First, people came to know the Julani of the years by his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa. Then they began to know him as a real personality, flesh and blood, in his face, gestures, expressions and clothing, which they watched abundantly and live.

What he has done is not a work that history grants to everyone. He carried out, within the short span of 11 days, a revolution that toppled an order that had been going on in the country for 14 years and had made the country unlivable. The manner in which he did it, as much as the fact that he did it, displayed a style that will earn itself a special place in the history of world revolutions and even in the history of wars. Only a few days earlier, Arab countries and European countries that had suspended their relations with him for 14 years had entered a race to restore their relations with Assad. About a month earlier, he had shown up at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Arab League and, without regard for what he himself had done and without shame, given a speech against the inhuman practices Israel committed in Gaza, but more importantly, it was considered normal in the forum where he spoke for him to speak so shamelessly. People, having lost their hopes that he would now be overthrown in return for his massacres and crimes against humanity over 14 years, which were no less than Israeli oppression, had begun to enter the path of restoring relations, the path of normalization. Until shortly before, meetings and plans about the future of Syria with Assad were being held at the US State Department.

Moving in exactly the opposite direction to the whole current of the world, entering from Aleppo and emerging from Damascus 11 days later is no small thing. A movement undertaken by giving up hope in everyone regarding stopping a criminal against humanity whom the world was powerless to stop, hoping for help only from God, was very much in keeping with the mindset and spirit of the Gazan heroes who entered the Al-Aqsa Flood of 7 October. In any case, the source of inspiration, the source of motivation and the mindset of both are the same. Moreover, we have been saying from the start that the strategic ground that made the 27 November operation possible was to a large extent stabilized by the Al-Aqsa Flood.

The Surat al-Fath states that a consequence (or cause) of conquest is the forgiveness of the believers' past and future sins or the concealment of their faults. In fact, what the verse points to is an extremely sociological process. Great successes, victories and conquests, together with the situation they bring about, lead to a redefinition of crime or the criminal. It is inevitable that the conquests that Ahmed al-Sharaa and his comrades, whose names have until now appeared on terror lists, brought about by overthrowing the truly criminal Assad regime will also change people's view of them and of their past and future faults.

Ahmed al-Sharaa visited the Aleppo Citadel after the liberation of the city.

Ahmed al-Sharaa's past, too, is reassessed in the light of the clear revolution he has delivered today. With the performance of justice he has shown to the Syrian people and all humanity, and with the good he has brought about, he reaches a merit that could hang the "terrorist" label around the necks of those who stuck it on him.

As all the parameters of Ahmed al-Sharaa's past and personality, which draw everyone's interest and curiosity, gradually emerge, the profile of a clear charismatic leader begins to appear. Charisma has a God-given side: stature, presence and a natural ability to influence people. Even if one has a share in this respect, charisma does not form and continue through these qualities alone. It can continue only with successes. Failures rapidly erode even the strongest charisma, and continued failures in time end leadership altogether. It is quite clear that the great success that has befallen al-Sharaa at this age necessitates dwelling further on his charismatic leadership.

Before al-Sharaa's course, which began in Iraq and ran through al-Qaeda, ISIS and al-Nusra and was carried from Iraq to Syria, his interest in the struggle against the Zionist occupation, in the Palestinian cause, should not be overlooked. But even before that, there is the information that his grandfather Kasım al-Sharaa, because of his struggle against the French when Syria came under occupation in the 1920s, took refuge in the city of Salt in Jordan together with Sultan Pasha, the then Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Revolution. Later the family, subjected to Zionist occupation through Assad's betrayal in the Golan, moved to Damascus and experienced one more occupation and hijra. After his father moved to Saudi Arabia under Assad's rule, it appears that in the lineage of Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was born there, struggle against imperialist occupation for 4 generations is a matter of spirit and culture.

He is now 42. When he began the movement in Syria he was only 28. He grew up through the process, living many things during the struggle, on the battlefields. Over this time he has changed, perhaps developed, transformed, toward a place very different from where he started. But in the end there have been goals and principles he never gave up. He devoted his struggle, which he had at the outset envisioned within a global "jihad" concept, from 2011 onward solely to Syria's deliverance from the Assad regime and focused on this. From then on, he set as his most important goal to save his own country without in any way interfering in the affairs of other countries. I have heard from many people that for years he told everyone that his primary goal was the liberation of Damascus. Ahmed Mansour of Al Jazeera, who has followed his course on this matter very closely from the start and says he received this statement from him many times, says that right after the revolution he got, to the same question, this time the answer "the reconstruction of Syria for the Syrian people."

What Ahmed al-Mansour tells about his leadership qualities exactly matches the impression I received as a result of my own meetings with him and my long interviews with those who work very closely with him.

For those looking for his harshness and rigidity behind his success, getting to know al-Sharaa's personality a little more closely may be very surprising in this respect, may perhaps at first cause disappointment, but when he is known more closely he may become even more understandable, for the personality they encounter is as gentle, polite and modest as possible, as far from harshness as possible, an understanding personality who listens thoroughly before speaking.

The governing experience he displayed in Idlib before reaching his final goal shows his organizational and administrative ability, but also that he can learn a great deal from developments and change himself. In Idlib, for example, he was exposed to protests while governing, but instead of angering him, these protests led him to understand the situation better and, by listening to the protests, to address the problems in his own administration all the more.

Seeing that he could not reach his real great goal, the goal of toppling the Assad regime, without forming a union, he started a very serious dialogue process among the groups that opposed Assad but, from squabbling among themselves, could never march toward the real goal, and somehow resolved his problems with all of them. That is why the unity that emerged while marching to the final goal and that undoubtedly affected the outcome is also, in part, a product of his dialogical performance.

This performance is achieved not through harshness and the arrogance of power but to a great extent through courtesy, politeness, fidelity to covenants, dialogue, understanding, determination and a strong ability to persuade. On top of the leadership al-Sharaa has successfully carried out up to this stage, the charisma produced by a great success, victory and conquest is now added.

The three things he did when he reached Damascus, as they added elegance to his victory, also gave great meaning to his own leadership through the symbolic content of his actions. First, with his faith that victory is from God, he performed a prostration of thanksgiving, went to the Umayyad Mosque and prayed, and right afterward went to the house where he was born and raised and knocked on the door, and with great courtesy told the person who opened it that this house belonged to him and that he needed to vacate it within a reasonable time. Thus he also showed the way to all Syrians who were wronged regarding all the property rights that the Baath regime had violated so recklessly and roughly for years against opponents. In doing so, by not letting go of his courtesy toward those who had seized his house even though it was his right, he reinforced the human quality of the revolution.