Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north and northwest, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. It is a republic under a provisional government and comprises 14 governorates. Damascus is Syria’s capital, while Aleppo is its largest city. With a population of 26 million across an area of 185,180 square kilometres (71,500 sq mi), it is the 56th-most populous and 87th-largest country.
The name "Syria" historically referred to the region of Syria, or known as Greater Syria and Syria-Palestine. The modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization. Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital under the Mamluk Sultanate. The modern Syrian state was established in the mid-20th 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 1945 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 1946, granting the nation de facto independence. The post-independence period was tumultuous, with multiple coups and coup attempts between 1949 and 1971. In 1958, Syria entered a brief pan-Arab union with Egypt, which was terminated following a 1961 coup d'état. The 1963 coup d'état carried out by the military committee of the Ba'ath Party established a one-party state, which ran Syria under martial law from 1963 to 2011. Internal power-struggles within Ba'athist factions caused further coups in 1966 and 1970, the latter of which saw Hafez al-Assad come to power. Under Assad, Syria became a hereditary dictatorship. Assad died in 2000, and he was succeeded by his son, Bashar.
During the Arab Spring in 2011, Syrian youth and the local coordination committees organized protests to voice their dissatisfaction with Assad’s government in what became known as the Syrian Revolution. Following the government’s response to the protests with lethal violence, the Free Syrian Army was formed and the revolution descended into a multifaceted and destructive civil war lasting 13 years with the involvement of several countries, leading to a refugee crisis in which more than 6 million refugees were displaced from the country. Syrian rebels had taken over half of the country within two years, but progress was rapidly undone after the emergence of the Islamic State which overrun rebel positions and occupied two thirds of the country. In response to these rapid territorial gains made in 2014 and 2015, several countries led a campaign combined with rebel and government counteroffensives, leading to its territorial defeat in 2017.
The Free Syrian Army struggled with internal division throughout its existence and after suffering their heaviest defeat after the four-year Battle of Aleppo, it fragmented and decayed. Thereafter, three political entities—the Syrian Interim Government, Syrian Salvation Government, and the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria—remained in Syrian territory to challenge Assad's rule. In 2020 the Syrian civil war experienced a lull and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham consolidated the remaining rebel groups in its stronghold of Idlib. It then led a series of offensives alongside a coalition of opposition forces led to the capture of Damascus and the fall of Assad's regime.
By 2025, the war had led to over 600,000 killed, left Syria’s infrastructure in ruin, and its economy in a poor state following years of international sanctions that were later eased. In March 2025, the Syrian transitional government replaced the Syrian caretaker government under new Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa.
A country of fertile plains, high mountains, plateaus, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups. Arabs are the largest ethnic group, and Sunni Muslims are the largest religious group.