Editors who violate any listed restrictions may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense.
An editor must be aware before they can be sanctioned.
With respect to any reverting restrictions:
Edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from all edit-warring restrictions. In order to be considered "clearly established" the consensus must be proven by prior talk-page discussion.
Edits made which remove or otherwise change any material placed by clearly established consensus, without first obtaining consensus to do so, may be treated in the same manner as clear vandalism.
Clear vandalism of any origin may be reverted without restriction.
Reverts of edits made by anonymous (IP) editors that are not vandalism are exempt from the 1RR but are subject to the usual rules on edit warring. If you are in doubt, contact an administrator for assistance.
If you are unsure if your edit is appropriate, discuss it here on this talk page first. Remember: When in doubt, don't revert!
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Syria, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Syria on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SyriaWikipedia:WikiProject SyriaTemplate:WikiProject SyriaSyria
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics
This article is within the scope of WikiProject History, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the subject of History on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HistoryWikipedia:WikiProject HistoryTemplate:WikiProject Historyhistory
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history
This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
I agree, and have placed a WP:RMTM for this. The Assads weren't royalty and didn't present themselves as such. In theory, the Baath Party leadership could have passed to others. SnowFire (talk) 07:49, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah it's very typical when regimes fall as quickly as Assad's did with very little (for lack of a better word) western media present, speculation goes wild Pikachubob3 (talk) 06:00, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move reviewafter discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Question This article seems tied to Al-Assad family which says, The al-Assad family, also known as the Assad dynasty, is a Syrian political family that ruled Syria... (Italics used in place of bolded text.} If this article is moved, should the other article be adjusted? --Super Goku V (talk) 09:59, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support While the question of whether the government characterises itself using the term "dynasty" is not of necessary relevance to the article naming, it is also clear that scholarly and journalistic sources do not commonly use the term "dynasty". Y. Dongchen (talk) 10:16, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The current title of dynasty is consistent with our article dynasty. Our article regime indicates that that term has a different meaning. Here are their definitions:
A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family, usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics.
In politics, a regime (also spelled régime) is a system of government that determines access to public office, and the extent of power held by officials.
Support. Thought it over for a bit, and the fact the word "regime" is very loaded term, but Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy being at that title means its not without precedent. Also, the other preceding or ancillary members of the Assad family are not really relevant to this article.</MarkiPoli> <talk /><cont /> 11:48, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
The current title means, effectively, Fall of the Assad government-that-we-don't/didn't-like.
While it's true that "regime" is widely used in the Western press, that's because Bashar al-Assad's government was widely seen as a government that "we" - leaders of Western states - didn't like. They happen to be right in my personal opinion, since al-Assad was a bloodthirsty tyrant, but that's irrelevant in this Wikipedia context. In normal content, we can't write "Assad regime", because that's WP:WEASELly. But for titles, we go by wide usage - WP:COMMONNAME. So two questions:
Can we use a weaselly name because it's widely used in the Western English-language press? (The above RM suggests "yes".)
Can we use or is it acceptable to use weaselly language in the content of this article to match the title, as an exception to WP:WEASEL?
The first question should probably only have loose discussion, unless the discussion starts evolving towards a "No" answer, since there was a snow close. At least in the short term, anyway.
For the second question, the precedent of Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, a topic on which there have been many decades of historical discussion, I only see two non-quote usages of "regime" within the article, while "government" is used a lot more. I would tend to say "No", except in cases where it clearly refers to the general system of government, rather than the specific Assad government. The risk of "Yes" to the second question is that then we sound like we're presenting the preferences of Western governments in a WP:WEASELly way - instead of saying outright, Fall of the bloodthirsty Assad government, we're pretending to sound educated by confusing between a meaning useful in political sciences (general system of government) with a word that means "government" but adds a pejorative connotation: Fall of the nasty Assad government written in an intellectual-sounding way to camouflage the meaning. Boud (talk) 19:40, 8 December 2024 (UTC) (strike through Q1 to avoid confusing the two questions Boud (talk) 01:18, 10 December 2024 (UTC))[reply]
The eagerness of the mainstream media and the unwitting cooperation of Wikipedians to use "regime" only for governments-that-Western-leaders-oppose makes me very much think of Two Minutes Hate. Boud (talk) 20:01, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; I've not seen any "unwitting wikipedian" use "Putin regime or Moscow regime" in constrast to the term "Kyiv regime" which was used by some vandals a long time back. Theofunny (talk) 07:27, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, ruling authoritarian governments which have lost the popular support of the people or don't have it yet and are being challenged politically, especially in a war are commonly referred to as "regimes" which is why, we don't see anyone calling the UAE or Saudi governments a regime. For example, in the Russian civil war article, you can see the bolshevik governance referred to as a "regime". Theofunny (talk) 07:44, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The designation "regime" has a quite specific meaning in political science parlance, and it is misused, both deliberately and not, throughout the encyclopedia.
I've done a de-WEASEL edit, hopefully without mistakes. People who see the nuances differently to me, feel free to further fix, or to avoid a risk of violating 1RR, propose them here if you think you've already done one revert in the last 24 hours. @Augmented Seventh: On the wider question of throughout the encyclopedia, someone sufficiently motivated could ask for help handling this with an interactive "de-regime-bot" - e.g. that finds pages with the word "regime" and asks you for each one if you wish to edit the section after checking the context properly. It shouldn't be done blindly, of course (quotes and references should not be changed, and some uses are valid). Boud (talk) 22:58, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Regime", in colloquial usage, describes an authoritarian an oppressive government, not a "negative" one. It may be your view (and the view of most of western society) that authoritarianism and oppression are bad but that doesn't mean that the word "regime" is inherently biased. The Assad regime was, by all accounts, authoritarian and oppressive. This is a simple fact.
Removing most instances of the word "regime", however, is biased, as it signals that you wish to separate an authoritarian regime from connotations of authoritarianism. Loytra (talk) 00:28, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Assad government was authoritarian and oppressive - that's well-sourced and not under debate. The problem with using "regime" with the connotation of "authoritarian and oppresive" is creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated. If the "authoritarian and oppressive" connotation of "regime" were not vague, then we would state, per V-Dem Democracy Indices, "the Saudi Arabian regime", "the Qatar regime", "the UAE regime", "the Egyptian regime", "the Turkish regime", "the Thai regime", depending on which particular cutoff and which particular index we wish to choose.Vagueness is not encyclopedic.Replacing some of occurrences of the word "government" by "dictatorship" would be much better than writing "regime": the meaning of "dictatorship" is unambiguous. Particular changes would depend on what makes sense in each particular sentence: repeating that the government is a dictatorship is relevant in some sentences, and of minor importance or distracting in others. Boud (talk) 01:54, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You're giving such examples, but it's actually your WP:IDONTLIKEIT, you're trying to tell we're not liking Assad and trying to denigrate him, but it's your arguments showing you don't like that terminology. Can't even give proper examples. First of all, it's the WP:COMMONNAME, WP:DUE. Like it or not, Assad's government was a regime. No reason to romanticize it. Beshogur (talk) 17:31, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: There has been a long-term convention in editing Syria articles to use the term "Syrian government" or "Assad government" as NPOV, even though many sources use "regime". I've always complied with that but wondered whether consensus was established. Now there's been a change of government, all our uses of "Syrian government" will be problematic and confusing, and make much more sense if changed to "Assad regime" or "Ba'athist regime". So I think now is a good moment to confirm a new consensus of using the term "regime" for the regime, so we can use "government" for whatever emerges next. BobFromBrockley (talk) 22:57, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These sources are irrelevant for the question under discussion (my Q2). To clarify things, I'll put a strike through Q1, to avoid confusing the two questions. Q2 is not a title debate. For the information in the body of our articles, we use WP:RS for the meaning of the sources' content, not for their style, especially when that style is vague or euphemistic or jumping on a bandwagon of loose language. For titles, the style of sources is relevant for WP:COMMONNAME. If the vast majority of sources call Joe Bloggs Joe the cool dude, then chances are the article title will be Joe the cool dude. However, the meaning of the sources will probably explain that cool dude means that the guy is popular and has charisma, so the content of the article will say "Joe was highly popular and charismatic", but will not say, "The cool dude was born on 1 Jan 1970 ... The cool dude won an award on 31 Dec 2010". Boud (talk) 01:18, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move reviewafter discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Oppose The "al-" part, i.e. wikt:ال, means "the", so Fall of the al-Assad regime would mean Fall of the the-Assad regime. That's why it's not common; it's a case of code-mixing that sounds bad to people knowing at least a little about both languages. Boud (talk) 22:33, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. It's not as if the Assad family uses the multi-part naming convention of non-Westernised Arabs (comprising an ism, laqab, kunya, nasab, and a nisba), and that "Assad" is somehow ambiguous. It is short and unambiguously refers to the political family starting with Hafez al-Assad. Y. Dongchen (talk) 23:07, 8 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose “al-“ prefix in Arabic means “the” so it is redundant. It would basically become “fall of the the-Assad regime”. So either “fall of the Assad regime” or “Fall of al-Assad regime” would be the choices here The Great Mule of Eupatoria (talk) 03:56, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Intl media generally uses the term "Assad regime" not "al-Assad regime". "al-Assad" is usually used while discussing the dynasty. Theofunny (talk) 07:20, 9 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Adding more context about the start of the anti-Assad offensive.
I added a paragraph about the political context to the start of the anti-Assad offensive against Aleppo, noting that rebels had planned the offensive in late 2023 (exact date not clear, but almost certainly after October 7). Turkey initially blocked the offensive but lifted its hold after a diplomatic initiative by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was rebuffed. The initial goal of the offensive was to be limited.
More could be added about the Aleppo phase of the anti-Assad offensive.
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move reviewafter discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Oppose The Assad regime fell, and the Syrian Arab Republic with him. Assad regime = SAR. We don't need article titles, "Assad regime" that's how sources refers to Assad's rule. Google up.
Examples:
French MFA: Syria – Fall of Bachar al-Assad’s Regime (8 December 2024)
France 24: Why the Assad regime collapsed in Syria – and why so fast
Oppose, people are calling it the fall of the Assad Regime or the toppling of Assad's Regime, so the title is fitting. There is only no sources calling it Ba'athist Syria.
Oppose per Beshogur and WP:COMMONNAME. I feel I should also note that "Ba'athist Syria", to me at least, could be interpreted at a passing glance as saying that Syria as a whole has fallen. /home/gracen/ (yell at me here) 21:23, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Although , it's true the show was mostly by the Al Assad family , the regime's principles conducive to such atrocities and brutality wasn't their own brand as in "Stalinism". The background of Ba'athist ideology , which some may oversimplify as an Arab copycat of Fascism , is too important to omit.
Ba'athist rule in Syria goes back to 1963. Bashar's father , Hafez , wasn't president until he staged a coup in 1970. Now 7 years might sound tiny compared to the 50-so years of this father-son dictatorship , but they didn't rule in their own name , as pointed out in the first thread of the talk page. Each of them ruled as the chairman of the Ba'athist party.
There's also another difference of Syria with those "X regime" situations , and that's we aren't dealing with a single government led by a single strongman like Pinochet , Pol Pot or Hitler. We instead have one person and his only successor who led this regime , and Hafez was a murderous tyrant too.
It should also be pointed out that we already have a precedent against keeping the current name : Baathist Iraq , which if not for the war 20 years ago one of his sons might have succeeded Saddam as well. We'll likely see in the next few years a similar treatment with a large portion of all articles of every topic dealing with Syria from 1963-2024 being merged into a single article under such title. That's something those insisting on keeping "Assad" because RS sources say so aren't paying attention to. For SEO related reasons, we could add the "Fall of the Assad regime" as a bolded name in the article's lead.
A better to way to think of it is to imagine replacing "Assad regime" with "Assadist Syria" as in Francoist Spain. Language wise is obviously an even more mouthful and bizarre term , and technically : this regime wasn't just about Bashar , an ophthalmologist who inherited his father's ideology-based regime rather than creating it , and the Ba'ath party's history in Syria is more than just him and his father.
Weak support I personally have never been a fan of using the term "regime" and, as per Anlztrk above, see it as a loaded term and therefore not encyclopedic and not politically neutral enough for usage on a global encyclopedia. That is regardless of how many RS or media outlets use the term. That's my personal view. It is okay for editors to not use the exact same verbiage as the RS. But at the same time I also agree "Ba'athist Syria" does not fit WP:COMMONNAME either. RopeTricks (talk) 01:04, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wait. I think it would be better to use the term "Syrian Arab Republic" as it's more neutral, refers to the former Syrian government, and is generally more accurate. There is another Wikipedia page, "Ba'athist Syria," that is currently discussing a name change to "Syrian Arab Republic." We should wait until the outcome of the discussion, and if it is renamed to it we should consider a change in this article so that it's more uniform. Wikipubliceditorpro (talk) 01:46, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This article focuses on the rule of Assad. Basically Assad regime's fall -> end of the Syrian Arab Republic. Look at the most sources, it talks about end of Assad's rule. Beshogur (talk) 14:10, 11 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Baathism is supposed to be secular while the "baathist" regime here was in effect a Shia Alawi Dictatorship supported by Shia theocratic militias and nation.  Theofunny (talk) 05:22, 16 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support per @RopeTricks in that "regime" is a loaded and POV term that should not be used in the title, but that no other WP:COMMONNAME exists. I would more strongly support a renaming to "Fall of the Syrian Arab Republic" if the new government does not re-use that name. Windfarmer—talk03:23, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Using the term "Assad regime" just screams bias. And besides, this government that has recently fallen was ruled by the same one since 1963. For these obvious reasons, I support the changing of the article's name. Mage0023 (talk) 07:06, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Cautious support: it isn't wrong to rename, but given the Ba'athist regime has been under the Assad dynastic rule since 1970s, it's much necessary to distinguish the earlier Ba'ath era (1963-70) and the Assad domination (1970-2024). I won't oppose the name change but there is a need to distinguish them properly. HiddenFace101 (talk) 07:15, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose If I (or any reasonable person) were performing a search for this article, or indeed any information on the subject, I would be most likely to search for "Assad" if not "Assad regime". Hardly anybody, if indeed anyone at all, is likely to search for "Ba'athist" or "Ba'athist Syria", a term that most people are probably unaware of. 2A00:23C8:9883:A001:EC62:FA99:A0F8:6301 (talk) 13:34, 12 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Beshogur. It was a totalitarian regime and it fell. I won't source bomb but nearly all of media is referring it as the collapse or fall of the Assad regime. Baathist Syria is used only on wikipedia. Theofunny (talk) 12:25, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support As stated, term "Assad regime" is not NPOV and it is biased. Also, Ba'athist Syria existed almost a decade before the Assad government rule was established. EkoGraf (talk) 13:18, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Hello! Unfortunately, I'll have no time at all to help you update this and other pages with more information on the offensive and the fall of the regime; however, I just wanted to leave you some useful sources you can use to add more details and links yourself.
However, I think you should check out the material from Il Post and Al Jazeera, too: the former outlet has put together a very on-point timeline, with lots of references to other newspaper and social media content, as well several in-depth articles like this one, while the latter has created a bunch of maps and graphics that could be quite useful as Creative Commons content that could be uploaded on Wikimedia portals.
The word itself is nigh-meaningless in its vagueness, since there's no political or economic system called "totalitarianism" and its application to one country or another depends entirely on external perception. It is also way too rooted on an ideological framework. Besides, when applied to both North Korea and Ba'athist Syria you know one of the two must be wrong. In my view it is WEASEL and editorialized. I petition it be replaced with more accurate/neutral terminology such as dictatorship or authoritarian. Figueiredo96 (talk) 05:03, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Assad regime was absolutely totalitarian in the same way that North Korea was. There were secret police, there was a cult of personality, you could find pictures or statues of Hafez and Bashar practically anywhere. It was a place where the walls had eyes and ears. It was a hereditary fascist dictatorship. -Sailor Ceres (talk) 05:30, 10 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per totalitarianism, In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, ... Per the 2024 V-Dem Democracy Indices (i.e. for 2023), Syria was 16th worst in terms of electoral democracy (Saudi Arabia was the most totalitarian by that parameter, Eritrea the second worst), and 15th worst in terms of liberal democracy (Eritrea was the worst by that parameter; North Korea second worst; Saudi Arabia was only the 11th worst). Political scientists have plenty of sources of information on which to make reasonably objective judgments whether or not Syria under Assad qualifies as totalitarian, or "only" authoritarian; the V-Dem Institute publishes numbers; The Economist Democracy Index has four regime types, none of which are called "totalitarian". There are plenty of academic sources that can be used to attribute claims that the Assad government was totalitarian, but giving the ratings on some of the researchers' numerical systems could be useful too. Go to the Wikipedia articles to find thesome sources.On the other hand, in relation to the discussion above, The Economist Democracy Index does not discriminate between regimes that are regimes versus regimes that are democracies, since it would be quite confusing to contrast regime regimes versus democratic regimes.Boud (talk) 00:08, 11 December 2024 (UTC) (minor edit Boud (talk) 02:32, 14 December 2024 (UTC))[reply]
Totalitarian is not a serious academic term. At worst it just supplants the use of fascist as insult, at best it is a misnomer. The use of the label based on Wikipedia's own definition in combination with some democracy or freedom ranking is WP:OR. Desalado (talk) 12:34, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also to go along those lines. The term “totalitarianism” is not only an extreme form of authoritarianism; but it also has certain key aspects: a charismatic dictator, a pervasive cult of personality, a secret police, etc. Syria is a textbook example of all of those things; and probably the reason why Syria did better on the than Saudi Arabia on that index is because Syria at least had “elections” for president (even though they may have been sham/show elections but they still had them). Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy and thus don’t have elections for head of state at all. Hurricane Clyde 🌀my talk page!22:53, 13 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was using Wikipedia for a general credibility check, not proposing it as a source. That's why I wrote There are plenty of academic sources that can be used to attribute claims that the Assad government was totalitarian, but giving the ratings on some of the researchers' numerical systems could be useful too. The numerical values would not decide "totalitarian" versus "not totalitarian"; they would be useful, WP:RSed information (which the reader may interpret as s/he wishes). I did add Go to the Wikipedia articles to find the sources, but I really only meant that that's a way to find some sources (I've updated to clarify) - the issue of finding an unbiased selection of sources is a difficult question going beyond the scope of this talk page. I might be wrong about plenty of academic sources for "totalitarian", but if there are serious academic sources using the adjective or noun, then they can be used. Boud (talk) 02:32, 14 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may be worth listing the reaction of non-state actors like Hamas (which is not recognized as an official government) due to the unique and/or interesting stances that they may take on the event. LordOfWalruses (talk) 03:16, 31 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]