This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north , Iraq to the east and southeast , Jordan to the south , and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. It is a republic under a transitional government and comprises 14 governorates.
Damascus is the capital and largest city. With a population of 25 million across an area of , square kilometres 71, sq mi , it is the 57th-most populous and 87th-largest country. The name "Syria" historically referred to a wider region , broadly synonymous with the Levant and known in Arabic as ash-Sham.
The modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC. Damascus and Aleppo are cities of great cultural significance.
Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital for the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The modern Syrian state was established in the midth century after centuries of Ottoman rule , as a French Mandate. The state represented the largest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman -ruled Syrian provinces. It gained de jure independence as a parliamentary republic in when the First Syrian Republic became a founding member of the United Nations , an act which legally ended the French Mandate.
French troops withdrew in April , granting the nation de facto independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, with multiple coup attempts in the country between and Internal power-struggles within Ba'athist factions caused further coups in and , the latter of which saw Hafez al-Assad come to power. Under Assad, Syria became a hereditary dictatorship , with power consolidated around his family.
