The Syrian Communist Party (Arabic

Arabic language

Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...

: الحزب الشيوعي السوري, transliterated

Arabic transliteration

Different approaches and methods for the romanization of Arabic exist. They vary in the way that they address the inherent problems of rendering written and spoken Arabic in the Latin alphabet; they also use different symbols for Arabic phonemes that do not exist in English or other European...

 as Al-hizb ash-shuyū'ī as-sūrī) is a political party

Political party

A political party is a political organization that typically seeks to influence government policy, usually by nominating their own candidates and trying to seat them in political office. Parties participate in electoral campaigns, educational outreach or protest actions...

 in Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

. The party emerged out of a split in the Syrian Communist Party in 1986, as formed by the anti-Perestroika

Perestroika

Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

 faction led by Khalid Bakdash

Khalid Bakdash

Khalid Bakdash was the leader of the Syrian Communist Party from 1936 until his death. In 1954 Bakdash became the first member of a communist party to be elected to an Arab parliament. He has since been called the "dean of Arab communism."-Early life:Bakdash was a Damascus native of Kurdish origin...

. Khalid Bakdash died in 1995 and was succeeded as secretary of his party faction by his widow, Wisal Farha Bakdash.

At the time of the 2000 Damascus Spring

Damascus Spring

The Damascus Spring was a period of intense political and social debate in Syria which started after the death of President Hafiz al-Asad in June 2000 and continued to some degree until autumn 2001, when most of the activities associated with it were suppressed by the government.- Background...

the party was able to publish a newspaper called Sawt al-Shaab ('Voice of the People').

External links

• Syrian Communist Party (Bakdash)