Symbols and Flags of the State in Syria (19) Subhi Barakat

1. Subhi Barakat al-Khalidi was born in 1889 in the city of Antakya al-Assi.
2. He became a prominent notable in Antioch and a leader of the resistance against the French in Antioch during the revolt that led to the Turkish-French War.
3. After the end of the war, he moved to the French-established state of Aleppo, from which he based his political activity.
4. His language was Turkish, and he couldn’t speak more than a few Arabic words in a row.
5. He was far from the nationalist movement in Damascus, which was struggling against the French mandate to establish a unified Syrian state with Damascus as its capital. An important part of this movement believed in Arab nationalism since the days of the Ottoman Empire, represented by the People’s Party led by Abdul Rahman al-Shahbandar in the 1920s and 1930s and the National Bloc in the 1930s, which Barakat was far from it by virtue of his upbringing and composition, and for this reason, in addition to his tendency to make Aleppo the capital of Syria, Barakat was hated in Damascus.
6. He tried to avoid the hatred of the people of Damascus by marrying Laila, the daughter of Muhammad Ali al-Abid, his finance minister and a prominent Damascene, but the marriage was short-lived and unsuccessful.
7. During the Great Syrian Revolution (25-1927 AD), he was accused of supporting the French bombing of Damascus, so the French asked him to submit his resignation to calm public opinion, so he resigned from his position as president of Syria on 12/21/1925.
8. He surrounded himself with a Turkmen entourage that occupied most of the top public posts, especially those directly connected to the presidential palace, and was known to favor Aleppo as the country’s capital, which contributed to his low popularity
9. He won a seat in the representative council of Aleppo in 1922, a seat in the Constituent Assembly as a result of the 1928 elections, and another in the Syrian Parliament resulting from the 1931 elections, and served as Speaker of the Syrian Parliament from 1932 to 1936.
10. In Ottoman Syria, he enjoyed the title “Bey” and continued to be addressed by it.
11. In 1930, he founded the Destourian Party as a pro-French party; his friendship with General Saray paved the way for him to become president of the Syrian state.
12. He pursued policies that were closer to the National Bloc after 1932. He was also known for his “clean hands”.
13. He represented Antioch at the Syrian General Conference (June 1919-July 1920), where he contributed to the declaration of the Syrian Arab Kingdom on March 8, 1920.
14. After the country entered the French Mandate, he supported the French and pursued a policy of favoritism towards them.
15. At the beginning of his activism, he was one of the revolutionaries against France and a comrade of Ibrahim Hanano, especially from May 1919 to July 1920, until Mahmoud al-Sharkasi, one of Aleppo’s notables, called on him to stop fighting France.
16. He visited Beirut and met with Henri Gouraud, and from then on he began to favor the Mandate until he was counted among its supporters, which turned his friendship with Hennano into enmity and rivalry.
17. He was accused of being anti-French in support of Mustafa Kemal, the Turkish president, because he was fighting a war against it in Cilicia. Once the armistice was concluded between them in 1920 (which led to the Ankara Agreement (10/20/1921), where France ceded to Turkey the lands of Cilicia or the northern Syrian provinces of the Ottoman states of Aleppo and Adana), he abandoned the revolution against it, which led to the interruption of the supply of weapons and ammunition from Turkey to the Hanano revolution.
18. He participated in the elections for the representative council of the State of Aleppo in 1922, and won one of the seats.
19. The Supreme Council of the Syrian Federation elected him as President of the Federation – i.e. Head of State – after Henry Gouraud declared a federal union between the State of Damascus, the State of Aleppo, and the State of the Alawite Mountain (June 22, 1922).
20. Barakat was one of the representatives of Aleppo, and on the day of the declaration of the federation, the members of the founding body met in Aleppo and elected him as its president.
21. The president of the federation combined the tasks of forming and presiding over the government with representative councils and federal governments within its three constituent provinces.
22. One of his most prominent achievements during his presidency of the Union was the creation of the Syrian Gendarmerie and the issuance of the Syrian paper currency in August 1922 under an agreement with the State of Greater Lebanon and the State of Jabal al-Druze.
23. Following the appointment of Maxime Weygand as Commissioner General and the summoning of Henri Gouraud, Weygand responded to the Syrians’ long-standing demand for unity and declared the establishment of the “Syrian State” consisting of the states of Damascus and Aleppo (December 24, 1924).
24. The decree creating the state stipulated that the former head of the Federal Council would be the head of state for three years, meaning that Barakat’s term would be until the end of 1927.
25. His presidency witnessed an increase in the freedom of political and social action provided by the new French commissioner, General Saray, but this was not reflected in any political, administrative or economic aspects of the state; on the contrary, corruption increased and the policy of buying loyalties in the government spread.
26. On the other hand, Abd al-Rahman al-Shahbandar, who founded the People’s Party (the womb from which the National Bloc later emerged), led a strong opposition to Barakat, calling for sovereignty, national unity, full personal freedom, and reforms, especially in the judiciary.
27. He did not support the Great Syrian Revolution, endorse its demands, or endorse the statement issued by Sultan al-Atrash, and warned ministers, directors general, and government employees to do the same. On October 18, 1925, he issued a law on imprisonment for up to two years and a fine of up to 500 liras for “anyone who causes panic among the people and disturbs public tranquility in the press or society.”
28. This law was issued eight days after General Saray was recalled to France and his duties were terminated following his bombardment of Damascus with heavy artillery, which caused massive destruction in the old Damascus neighborhoods, especially al-Midan and Sidi Amud (which burned and was destroyed, giving the neighborhood the name al-Harika). This summons signaled a change in French policy and a decline in President Barakat’s favor, allowing the French Legation to negotiate with the Nationalists.
29. His reign from July 1925 was characterized by the proliferation of battles, barricades, chaos, and revolutionary speeches and articles across Syria and even Greater Lebanon.
30. He resigned as the security situation in the capital improved and elections for a representative assembly were called (December 21, 1925), having failed to persuade or win over public opinion.
31. Henri de Jouvenel even challenged him in his report to the League of Nations Committee on Assignments, and it seems that the French wanted him as a scapegoat for their failed policy in Syria.
32. The French Legation announced the president’s resignation and the appointment of Pierre Alib as interim military governor until May 1926, when Barakat was succeeded as head of state by Damad Ahmad Nami.
33. He ran in the Constituent Assembly elections in 1928 and won one of the seats from Aleppo.
34. After the declaration of the Syrian constitution in 1930, the establishment of the Constitutional Party was announced in northern Syria. However, its support for the French and its involvement in favoring family alliances made the party unpopular.
35. He returned and participated in the 1931 elections and won from Aleppo as well.
36. His house was attacked, resulting in eight injuries, by supporters of the National Bloc after the results were announced, following the loss of the National Bloc, which had popular leaders in Aleppo such as Ibrahim Hanano and Saadallah al-Jabri, to Barakat.
37. Supporters of the National Bloc beat him a few days later in an Aleppo hotel; Akram Hourani and his associates attempted to assassinate him in Beirut the same year.
38. The 1932 parliament elected him as its president on June 11 by 51 votes to 17 for Hashim al-Atassi, under a compromise drafted by Jamil Mardam that provided for a 50-50 government between the Mandate (moderates) and the National Bloc and the election of a neutral president and a moderate speaker of parliament.
39. His arrival was helped by the support of the 28-member (out of 68) Northern MPs bloc for his candidacy, but this did not contribute to his return to the executive branch at all and he never formed another government.
40. Following the formation of Haqi al-Azm’s third government (June 3, 1933) and the popular and political prominence of the National Bloc, Barakat began to lean towards the bloc and stood with it in opposing the government in the House of Representatives.
41. On November 24, 1934, when French Commissioner Charles de Martel issued a decision to suspend the work of the parliament after it refused to ratify the treaty of friendship and alliance with France, the National Bloc formed a “working committee” of which Barakat was one of the members.
42. During the Sixty Years’ Strike (1936) in most Syrian cities, which led to the formation of a delegation from the National Bloc to travel to Paris to reach a new and fair agreement with France, and as the isolation of the Mandate (or moderates) became clear, Barakat retired to Antioch, did not return to Damascus, and did not run in the elections for the 1936 parliament, which was dominated by the Bloc.
43. – When the Iskenderun Brigade was separated from Syria (1938), he resided in Antioch and remained there until his death in 1939.

We at Syrian Future Movement, as we recall the memory of Syria’s founding statesmen, recall one of Syria’s influential men, and one of the symbols of the first Syrian state’s flags who contributed to influencing its structure, Al-Bek “Subhi Barakat Al-Khalidi”.) We wish to link our contemporary present with a solid past and historical stations, hoping to revive in our people the need to build and create statesmen par excellence, learn from their experiences, overcome their negatives, build on their history, preserve the homeland, safeguard the gains, and restore the Syrian state to its glory after years of injustice, tyranny, and corruption.