Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country located in western Asia, bordered by Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, and Turkey in the north, Iraq to Jordan and the Middle to the south, and occupied Palestine to the south-west.
The name of Syria included the entire region of the Levant in the past, while that of the modern state contains many sites of ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the third millennium BC. In the Islamic era, the capital, Damascus, one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate, and the provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.
Population of Syria is a Sunni Muslim 74% and 13% Shia and Alawi, 10% of Christians and 3% of the Druze. Since 1960, the Alawite military officers have tended to dominate politics in the country. About 90% of the population are Muslims including Arabs, Kurds, Circassians and others, while about 10% of the Christians including Arabs and Assyrians / Syriacs, and Armenians. Ethnic minorities include the Kurdish and Assyrian / Syriac, Armenian, Turkmen and Circassian.
Founded the modern state Syrian as a French mandate and gained independence in April 1946 as a parliamentary republic. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a large number of military coups and coup attempts that rocked the country in the period 1949-1970. Syria was the subject of the Emergency Law between 1962-2011, and the suspension of most of the constitutional protection of the citizens effectively and its system of government is considered non-democratic. Bashar al-Assad is the current president, preceded by his father, Hafez Assad, who has been in power since 1971. Syria is currently facing widespread protests as part of the Arab spring.
