The government of Syria fell on December 8 in an end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a Turkey-backed jihadist offensive swept across government-held territory and invaded the capital of Damascus in 10 days.
The assault began on November 27. A jihadist terrorist group named Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant; HTS) launched a coordinated attack on the Aleppo Governorate in northwestern Syria, captured and killed dozens of Syrian Army soldiers, and promised mass executions and beheadings in front of TV cameras. Videos of jihadists abducting Kurdish women have also surfaced on social media.
As Aleppo fell, HTS, formerly the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, was supported on the northern front by the Syrian National Army (SNA), a coalition of a dozen Islamist armed groups largely financed, equipped and trained by Turkey.
The cities of Hama, and Homs also respectively fell into the hands of the Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists of Turkey.
Many Greek Christians who fled cities and villages seized by jihadists are currently seeking refuge in the formerly government-controlled “Valley of Christians/Wadi al-Nasara” in Syria. Now that the Valley has fallen to jihadists with the collapse of the Assad government, the very lives of Christians there are at stake.
The X account Greco-Levantines WorldWide reported on December 5:
In Syria, many families from the Greek Antiochian Orthodox community are fleeing the northern Hama countryside, particularly Suqaylabiyah and Mhardeh, and seeking refuge in the Valley of the Christians. The local community in the valley has responded by opening homes, churches, and community halls to offer shelter and support to the displaced.
Syria is home to several ethnic and religious minorities such as Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Yazidis, Druze, and the Alawites. A jihadist takeover means outright massacres, forced displacements, or enslavement for these communities.
The Christian communities in Syria are often simply called “Arab Christians” and their original ethnic identities as well as histories are mostly ignored by the mainstream media and academia. Greeks of Syria and the wider Levantine region are one of these forgotten communities. Greeks, however, are deeply and historically rooted in Syria and the rest of the Levant. Many Greek activists from the region are raising awareness about the history of Levantine Greeks and the current challenges they are facing.
The European Conservative interviewed Rafael, a Greek Levantine activist based in Europe. For his safety, we will not disclose his surname.
Rafael runs The Levantine Greek Association, a registered NGO based in the EU. The organization’s X account is @LevantineGreeks; his personal one is @rafaelimikhail. There are also other X accounts such as @GrecoLevantines and @GrecoNation that are regularly sharing insightful information about Levantine Greeks and the ongoing jihadi assaults against Syrian Christians.
Can you tell us about yourself and about the founding of the Levantine Greek Association?
I am a Syrian born Levantine Greek with ancestry from the entire former Eastern Roman region. My maternal side is of Cypriot Lebanese mixed background, and my paternal side is Anatolian and Syrian in origin. My parents left the Levant when I was four years old, so I grew up in Europe and only had contact with the diaspora throughout my entire upbringing. When I was growing up, I often asked questions about our identity. I was never really satisfied with the answers I was given. Often, I was told we were Christian Arabs, but when I was around Arabs, I felt very estranged from their customs and general philosophy of life. When I was around Greeks or in Greece, I felt like I was home. This made me question everything I had been taught and I took on a journey to find out the truth. Through this journey, I went through a cultural and religious path at first, but later I started reading about Levantine history. Once I realized what the actual history of the Levant was, I started reading local history which confirmed that the Levantines were Mediterranean in culture, history and genetics—the opposite of inlanders with Bedouinistic history and genetics. With DNA sequencing technology made available in recent years, studies have confirmed these theories and now data is being published as we speak, data which will contend mainstream history of the region.
Our Levantine Greek Association was originally founded only to share the results of these findings of history and genetics with both Greek nationals and to the diasporas and minorities around the world. Since this association was founded, the Levant has been in what seems to be nothing less than a perpetual state of war. Now we have to relaunch the association to also focus on speaking on behalf of the community in the Levant and to send aid in all sorts of ways to keep our community alive, as the entire community in Syria is under threats of extinction.
You’ve been on social media informing the world about the Greek and Christian history of Syria and the wider Levantine region. Please explain the historical and cultural importance of Syria in terms of Hellenism and Christianity.
Anyone who has studied Hellenistic history cannot escape the fact that Syria, with Antioch as its capital, was the new center of Hellenism rivaled only by Alexandria in Egypt. As a matter of fact, Antioch remained a very important center for the first few centuries after the foundation of the Nea Roma (Constantinople). I can’t count how many of the Greek philosophers were Levantines; Libanius was perhaps the most widely known. But there were also Meleager of Gadara and many more. This importance remained until Antioch was lost to the Muslim Arab conquest, about which Emperor Heraclius said: “Farewell, a long farewell to Syria, my fair province. Thou art an infidel’s now. Peace be with you, O Syria—what a beautiful land you will be for the enemy’s hands.”
Jihadist terrorists invaded and seized Aleppo and the surrounding areas, beginning on November 27, with the help of the government of Turkey. What does Turkey aim to achieve in Syria through this ongoing invasion?
Turkey wants to expand its territories and carry out some sort of Ottoman imperial revival. Aleppo, for a long time the richest city in the world, is the prize they are after. The rest of Syria, I guess, is to be made into some type of vassal state. We have to keep in mind that this is not a conspiracy theory. Just watch Turkish media’s reporting and their ambition is out in the open. This is not their policy only in Syria and parts of Iraq, but also very clearly in the Aegean Sea, where they publicly claim many Greek islands as well as parts of Thrace and Macedonia like the city of Thessaloniki in Greece.
Much of the mainstream media call the invading terrorists “moderate rebels.” Is the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/HTS a moderate group? Who are the HTS militants?
Mainstream media has always claimed they are “moderate rebels” when in fact we know they are neither moderate nor rebels. They are the same militants that beheaded women and children, just rebranded with new names. These people want a theocratic country. Syria is in need of reforms, but they will have to be democratic and respect human rights. The Syrian people have suffered for over a decade now, regardless of their political or religious views. War, disease, sanctions causing famine, lack of medicine, lack of electricity, the list is long. It is the same with Lebanon: sometimes the country lights up like the sun itself, only to be brought down in sectarian battles for reasons we should have left behind us a long time ago. It is 2024. We even have artificial intelligence created in the West. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, people are dying for reasons they don’t even remember or fully understand.
Aleppo is today a mosaic of different cultures and communities including Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Alawites, Kurds, Yazidis, Arabs, and others. Yet, Erdogan’s ally, the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), Devlet Bahceli, declared that Aleppo “is Turkish and Muslim to its very marrow. It is not just us who says so, history says so, geography says so. The Turkish flag that was hoisted over Aleppo citadel says so.” What would your response to Bahceli be?
My response to him would be that Aleppo, an 11,000-year-old city, existed long before the first Turk and long before Islam. Aleppo was also always part of Syria even during the Ottoman Empire (in Hellenistic times we called it Beroia). The city, as I mentioned above, was the richest in the world even when Constantinople was the capital of the Roman Empire, thanks to its diversity of cultures and its location on the Silk Road. We have all seen videos of how Syrians, both Muslims and Christians, have been subject to abuse, killings, and racism at the hands of invading jihadists. I cannot see why any Syrian—regardless of ethnicity or religion—would want to live under those conditions.
What is the current situation in Syria regarding Christians? What do your contacts on the ground tell you?
The information I am getting firsthand is from the Hama (Epiphania) region and the Christian towns that surround it. The situation is dire and two of our largest towns, which amount to a population of approximately 50,000 people, have been evacuated due to the artillery raining down on them by these militant groups.
What do Christians in Syria need right now?
Christians in Syria need urgent help. For now, it seems they are still alive, but the last time the city of Aleppo was besieged, they were targeted and killed. I believe evacuation and humanitarian aid should be the priority at this point.
What do you think the EU executive should do to help minorities in Syria?
The EU should take their blindfold off, stop funding these wars, and stop being hypocrites. The EU laments war on European soil while funding both the European war and the wars in the Middle East. Anatolia [Turkey] and the Middle East are on the border with Europe, something the EU decision-makers seem to forget. Any war in the Middle East will very likely spill over to Europe.
What should be done to help protect the ethnic and religious minorities in Syria in the long term?
I am personally a believer in federalization. If you want to live under Islamic rule, it is your right to do so, but you cannot force others to do so. Create states within the state where Muslims can live according to their own rules and let the Christians live their own lifestyle as well as the other minorities. But I am becoming more and more pessimistic and think that long term, evacuation might be the only solution. My mind sometimes wanders to the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. It makes me sad to see indigenous peoples having to leave their ancestral lands because of religion or politics.