The National Dialogue Conference in Syria

We mentioned last week that a National Conference Preparatory Committee had been formed to address, through consultation, the drafting of the Syrian Constitution and the general course of events in Syria, and the roadmap laid out at its first press conference. We included the quite hopeful assessments by the Committee's spokesman Hasan al-Daghaym on the committee's work following their first meetings. As planned, the Committee held the first National Dialogue Conference (SNDC) in Damascus over the past two days (24-25 February).

This SNDC conference is a long-term process of dialogue and of reaching common reason and deciding together on all of Syria's issues. It must be appreciated that such a process is not one Syria has witnessed until now. It is a style of politics that perhaps some did not expect at all from Ahmed al-Sharaa and his friends, who carried out the revolution and saved the country from the tyrannical and murderous 61-year Baath regime. But Sharaa and his friends prefer this style and path of politics.

While approximately 4,000 people from across the country are expected to take part in the series of meetings to be held within this process, it is stated that 600 participants will be divided into different working groups. According to the specialized agendas of the 6 working groups to be formed, the main agenda items of the conference stand out as achieving transitional justice, planning and managing constitutional and institutional development, securing personal freedoms and placing them on a sustainable constitutional basis, humanitarian issues, both the recognition of civil society organizations and securing their contribution and participation, administrative reform and economic recovery.

Preparatory Committee Chairman Maher Allush stated that the conference offers Syrians an opportunity to build a new state on the basis of justice, freedom and equality. For participation in this conference, the principles that apply are that all components of Syria are represented, that no ethnic, sectarian, gender or political quota is applied, and that only technocratic merit is considered. Therefore, as an answer to criticisms made from the outset that some Turkmen groups were not represented, it is recalled that no ethnic or sectarian group is represented as a group. But Turkmens exist, and they are participating in the conference in a serious way.

Maher Allush began his opening speech by saying that "today here they have launched a historic process that will shape Syria's future, and that real dialogue began with the fall of the Assad regime and was shaped by the will of the people." Allush gave the information that, within the scope of the Preparatory Committee's work, working groups and discussion sessions were organized and the views of different segments were heard, that one-on-one meetings were held with more than 4,000 people from all over the country, and that expectations and demands were carefully assessed.

The speech made at the conclusion of the meeting by Syrian President Ahmed Sharaa was a true manifesto, with its messages full of hope about the difficulties the country has experienced, national unity and the future, together with the fundamental principles it rests on. Not only in terms of the roadmap it contains, but also his emphases on the philosophy on which this program rests show that Sharaa will not be an ordinary politician.

For example, despite all the pain experienced, all the prices paid, the martyrs, the losses and all the ruins inherited, by saying "we do not lament the past; we are a nation of action," he instills in his people an entirely different state of mind. Reminding that, after so much destruction and disaster, they now face the responsibility of rebuilding the state, he calls for unity and consultation for the future of the country and the nation.

These are strong expressions showing that a head of state also aspires to a leadership role. Indeed, this is a politics in continuity with the leadership Sharaa showed, up to the present revolution point, in the administration of Idlib and before that in gathering and bringing together the opposition groups in Syria under one roof. Directing the opposition groups, which conflicted with each other and with him, toward the main goal and forming a unity out of them required some compromise on his own political claims too, and in this process he did not hold back from making some concessions. Leadership is not always achieved by driving one's own authority onto the field as indisputable and monopolistic. On the contrary, by recognizing others too, it rests on stronger foundations through dialogue with them.

Referring also to the gazelles read from outside precisely in the process of Syria's reconstruction, Sharaa, in response, noted that systems not matching the realities of Syrians should not be imported and that it is wrong to turn society into a laboratory of political fantasies.

He emphasized that Syria is an indivisible whole and that it is unacceptable for any group, on account of the weapons it carries and relying on some foreign powers it has put behind it, to try to create privileged zones. At this point: "The state's monopoly on arms is not a luxury; it is an indispensable condition of national security and stability."

Syria is essentially a people that throughout history has produced a model of coexistence that could be an example to the world; the real purpose of the obstacles being put in the way of its doing so today as well can easily be seen. Referring also to those who want to turn Syria's disasters into opportunities for their own interests, Sharaa recalled that Syria had experienced many transformations in the past, from colonialism to political turmoil, from struggles for unity to Baath rule and the era of the Assads, and, stating that this history had taught the Syrian people to be strong and to stand firm with resistance, he ended his speech with these words:

"Today Syria calls all its children to come together, to bind their wounds together, to build their future hand in hand. We no longer have the luxury of disappointing this homeland. It is we who will protect it, strengthen it and bring it to the prosperity it deserves. We will work day and night, we will raise Syria up again."

We are in fact quite familiar with these voices in Turkey, but in any Arab-Islamic country, a leader addressing his people with this spirit, responsibility and humility is a very great novelty and of course has a deep meaning.