Syria is formally called the Syrian Arab Republic, a country in Western Asia. Syria surrounds the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the eastern as well as southeast, Jordan to the south, as well as Israel and also Lebanon to the southwest. Cyprus lies to the west across the Mediterranean Sea. A nation of productive plains, high hills, as well as deserts, Syria is residence to varied ethnic and also religious groups, consisting of the bulk Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, and also Greeks.

Spiritual groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Isma’ilis, Shiites, Salafis, as well as Yazidis. The resources as well as largest city of Syria is Damascus. Arabs are the largest ethnic group, as well as Sunnis are the biggest spiritual group.

Syria is a unitary republic containing 14 governorates and is the only country that politically embraces Ba’athism. It is a member of one international organization besides the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Motion; it was suspended from the Arab Organization in November 2011 and the Organisation of Islamic Participation, and self-suspended from the Union for the Mediterranean.

The name “Syria” traditionally referred to a broader area, extensively synonymous with the Levant, as well as understood in Arabic as al-Sham. The contemporary state incorporates the websites of a number of ancient kingdoms and realms, including the Eblan human being of the third millennium BC. Aleppo and the funding city Damascus are amongst the oldest constantly occupied cities worldwide. In the Islamic age, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate as well as a rural capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.

The modern-day Syrian state was established in the mid-20th century after centuries of Footrest regulation, and also after a quick period as a French required, the recently produced state represented the biggest Arab state to emerge from the formerly Ottoman-ruled Syrian districts.

It got de jure self-reliance as a parliamentary republic on 24 October 1945, when the Republic of Syria ended up being a starting participant of the United Nations, an act which legally ended the previous French Mandate, although French troops did not leave the country until April 1946.