The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party - Syria Region, also known simply as the Syrian Ba'ath Party, was a socialist and secularist political party in Syria founded on 7 April 1947 by Michel Aflaq, Salah al-Din al-Bitar, Zaki al-Arsuzi, and Akram al-Hawrani. The Ba'ath Party was one of many Ba'athist parties to be formed in the Middle East, and its main goals were to create a secular Syrian society that would be modernized through Arab socialism. From 1963, the Ba'ath Party was in control of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic, with father and son Hafez al-Assad and Bashar al-Assad ruling over the Ba'ath Party after 1970 as members of the ruling Assad family. The party seized power in a 1963 coup d'etat, and it established authoritarian control over the Syrian government, overseeing its modernization and its secularization. The Syrian Ba'ath Party was further left on the political spectrum than the Iraqi Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party in Iraq, which held more right-wing views; the Assad family ruled as dictators, but they pursued leftist goals such as banning headscarves and enforcing secularism in the nation. The Ba'ath Party's rule would be challenged by an uprising in 2011 during the Arab Spring, leading to the bloody Syrian Civil War. On 11 December 2024, following Bashar al-Assad's overthrow by Tahrir al-Sham, the Syrian Ba'ath Party indefinitely suspended its activities.
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