The Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia in 2011 when a street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest against poverty, quickly spread to many countries in the Middle East, bringing down dictators who were believed to be unshakable. The spread of the Arab Spring to Syria began when a group of young people wrote “Your turn has come too, doctor (Assad)!” on a wall in Daraa. The Assad regime raided the homes of the young people and detained them.

Following the detention of the youths, people in cities such as Daraa, Damascus, Hasakah, Deir ez-Zor, Homs and Banias took to the streets chanting “We don’t want a dictator, we want freedom,” protesting the detention of the young people. As the events quickly spread across the country, the Assad regime, which described what was happening as an “international conspiracy,” ignored the demands for democratization and chose to open fire on the demonstrators and suppress the protests with weapons.

The regime’s armed response to the demonstrators led revolutionary groups to arm themselves as well. This meant a civil war that lasted 13 years.

During the civil war, the regime bombed cities indiscriminately, without distinguishing between civilians, and carried out countless massacres.

In the cities reduced to rubble, hundreds of thousands of people were killed by the regime.

The Assad regime even used chemical weapons against its own people in Eastern Ghouta.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians lost their children.

The civil war created a Syria where mass graves became commonplace. The Assad regime invited Shia militias and Russia into the country, further increasing its massacres against the Syrian people.

Millions of Syrians were forced to leave their country and migrate to other countries.

For 13 years, Syrians lived as refugees in many countries, especially Türkiye, and dreamed of a free Syria.

Hundreds of thousands of Syrians who did not want to leave their country were thrown into prisons set up by the regime to torture political prisoners, especially the Sednaya prison.

In the face of the massacres, the opposition was squeezed into Idlib, while the regime continued to conduct airstrikes on Idlib—designated as a de-escalation zone—in coordination with Russia. Assad was closed to negotiations and acted with the air of a triumphant leader convinced he had won the civil war.

When the date reached 27 November 2024, the last great march of the revolution had begun: the Deterrence of Aggression Operation.

On 29 November 2024, the revolutionaries took control of Aleppo and raised the Free Syria flag over the Aleppo Citadel.

Simultaneously, the opposition forces, who seized the town of Saraqib—where the strategic M4 and M5 highways intersect southeast of Idlib—moved from there toward Hama province.

After Hama, the revolutionaries, advancing rapidly, took control of places such as Homs, Sweida, and Quneitra from regime forces and reached the gates of Damascus.

At 06:18 on the morning of 8 December, history witnessed an unstoppable flow toward revolution. Assad fled to Moscow with his family, and the regime collapsed. Damascus was now under the control of the revolutionaries.

Millions of Syrians took to the streets with Free Syria flags in their hands, celebrating the arrival of the freedom they had waited for 61 years.

The people made victory signs, toppled the statues of Hafez al-Assad, and celebrated the revolution to the fullest.

Ahmed Shara, the leader of the revolution, first went to the Umayyad Mosque to perform a prayer of gratitude and then toured the streets of Damascus. 8 December 2024 was the first day of free Syria.

Syrians expressed the anger they had accumulated over the years, and Assad’s portraits were thrown into the trash.

Millions of Syrians celebrated the new Syria rising from the ashes.

After the revolution, Syria rapidly integrated into the international community. Sanctions began to be lifted, while internally, efforts toward development and reconstruction accelerated. The strongest sign of integration with the international community was that Syrian President Ahmed Shara became the first Syrian president to address the UN General Assembly.

And now, the first year of Free Syria has passed.