MSDOn Saturday, May 14th, the Syrian National Democratic Alliance Party held a dialogue seminar on the Syrian national identity at the leylon Institute in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo city, in the presence of a number of political and intellectual figures from various Syrian provinces.
In the first theme of the seminar, which was held under the title “Syrian national identity”, focused on the determinants of the Syrian national identity, the reasons for the decline of the national identity and the escalation of secondary identities, while the second theme was on the promotion of the Syrian, national and inclusive identity.
The seminar began with a welcoming speech by the Secretary General of the Syrian National Democratic Alliance party, Ahmed Al-Araj. “We were invited to meet with Syrians to talk about the Syrian identity and the repercussions of this war on the Syrian national identity.” He said.
He referred that after more than a decade of war and the Syrian crisis that has left woes and divided the Syrian people with the support of some regional and international countries.
“The Syrian people have a territory and a history, but the conspirators have supported the sectarian spirit among the Syrian people and as a result of the killings and scourges, each section of the people followed its sect and nationality and that has affected negatively on the Syrian union” he added.
He also said that despite everything that happened and what the Syrian people suffered, they remained steadfast, unified and coherent with their Syrian identity.
In turn, the member of the Presidential Council and the Public Relations Office of the Syrian Democratic Council “Hussein Azzam” defined the national identity as it is belonging to the land, which means the homeland and the homeland is history and geography, a sense of belonging to a group of state or nation, which is based on aspects related to culture, race and language and belongs to a human group living on a specific geographical area.
He pointed out that the guarantee of the national identity is democracy and with it the principle of justice, equality, non-discrimination, equal opportunities and the preservation of rights, so they are the most important factors that help man to build a cohesive society where stability is achieved within a society by uniting all its different groups in religion, race or language under fixed laws and systems.
Azzam said that due to the absence of a homogeneous political society and the absence of equality among citizens regarding the law and during the transition process of political modernity, Syria has reached a crisis of conflict over the political identity of the societal role.
He pointed out that after more than half a century of conflict, political and cultural disconnection and the lack of any common cultural formula thus all those reasons caused the current Syria and the existence of a real struggle regarding identity.
Azzam stressed that matter requires a political and cultural project through which a new Social Contract based on the equal citizenship must be formulated and worked by all political forces and parties in order to build a new, national, joint and non-exclusionary identity that protects and respects all diversity and ethnic and religious pluralism in the Syrian society.
“The Syrian society is able to create a Syrian comprehensive identity through consensus, participation and creation of a community of citizenship and the national affiliation, and therefore the demand of the Syrian national identity is through our ability to establish the modern state based on a new Social Contract.” he concluded.
At the end of the seminar and through the participations, the participants came up with a number of recommendations, including:
– The identity is a conscious and free choice based on a set of cultural and ethnic distinctions, so work must be done to promote a Syrian national identity that includes these distinctions.
– The inclusive Syrian identity cannot marginalize or overlook the cultural rights of the Syrian ethnic and religious components; the presence of all these components is done through constitutional recognition.
– Affiliation is belonging to the homeland Syria, one Syria, with a secular, democratic and pluralistic regime, a regime that is a decentralized rule and serves all regions equally without the possibility of division or separation.
– Syrian nationalism is an inclusive framework and the dependence of an ethnic, religious or sectarian framework is a divisive factor.
– Strengthening for belonging to the Syrian homeland requires working to come up with a solution for the reality of discord and the actual division by launching a political development process and starting the reconstruction process and the return of displaced people to their homes and areas, in addition to consolidating the cause of dialogue, non-violence and respect for freedom of expression.
– Pay attention to young people, taking care of them and support them to reach the start of National Action and own the initiative to change the state of fragmentation, as they are as the first responsible for the solution project and are able to apply the founding culture of the inclusive national vision, based on self-knowledge and others.
– The identity as a will and a choice and as a relative and composite historical product, it is the joint responsibility of all political and social forces and actors, thinkers and societal forces.
– The state is concerned with providing the basis for equality of national rights and duties among all without discrimination of any right, duty or equal opportunity regarding all matters, so this eliminates injustice, disregard and exclusion. therefore, constitutional principles such as these must be supra-constitutional principles.
– As identity is considered as one of the main causes of the Syrian crisis, so the solution begins with a safe, gradual, consensual and national dialogue, with the development and expansion of programs for this dialogue and the involvement of the largest number of Syrians.
– Protecting of the national identity from the globalization which tries to abolish it and end it completely.
