Since former regime leader Bashar Assad decided to confront the Syrian people’s peaceful protests with bullets, millions of Syrians have been forced to leave their homeland. The vast majority of them settled in Türkiye, where they received a welcome that can, at the very least, be described as compassionate. In Türkiye, Syrians heard words from Turks that seemed almost too extraordinary to be true. I mean: When was the last time people heard a sentence such as: "You are the muhajirun (the earliest Muslims who migrated from Mecca to Medina with the Prophet Muhammad), and we are the Ansar (native citizens of Medina, who welcomed and supported the Prophet Muhammad)”?

This was in addition to the Turkish government’s official stance toward the Assad regime and its support for the Syrian opposition. For this reason, Assad saw President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a bitter and determined adversary.

On the night of the failed coup attempt in Türkiye, the Syrian regime, through all its military and media apparatuses, cheered for the putschists and displayed an ugly sense of Schadenfreude over what was happening in the neighboring country.

Syrians experienced that night as the Turks did. They feared for democracy as Turks feared; they prayed to God for victory as Turks did, and some of them even took to the streets to stand against the military, as I personally did.

On the afternoon of July 15, I was out with my Turkish family. Around 7 p.m., we received the first phone call:

"Where are you? The roads are closed ... There is a coup attempt.”

A coup?!

The older generation present knew this word all too well. Hearing it made their bodies tense, and their reaction alone was enough to bring fear into the eyes of the younger generation.

We rushed to the home of a relative. We remained frozen in front of the screens. Then-Prime Minister Recep Erdoğan appeared, calling on citizens to take to the streets. We did not hesitate for a moment.

I was the only Syrian among a group of around 10 Turks, friends and relatives. We were in Üsküdar Square. We tried to reach the Bosphorus Bridge, but the road was blocked. We stayed there, protested and chanted slogans.

I shouted in Arabic and in my broken Turkish. I shouted with the voice of someone who knows exactly what military rule means, what it means for democracy to be violated – whatever justification may be invoked – and what the word "homeland” truly means.

I had chosen Türkiye as my second homeland since arriving there as a refugee in 2014. And I was absolutely unwilling to lose my homeland a second time under military boots.

Later, I visited the coup martyrs’ museum on Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge, which had been renamed the "July 15 Martyrs’ Bridge.” It is a museum that preserves the memory of the Turkish people, of an extraordinary night: the night when the people prevented the military from stealing their homeland.

In this museum, Turks preserve pieces of clothing belonging to the martyrs, vehicles crushed by the tanks of the coup plotters, and every piece of glass still bearing traces of the blood of a wounded person or a martyr. They even preserve the shoes that people lost in the chaos, torn from their feet under the rain of bullets and the fire of the traitors.

Standing in that museum, I asked myself a question, as if I had never witnessed the repression of the military regime in my own country and never discovered its truly ugly face:

"What drives a human being to stand exposed, with a bare chest, facing bullets?”

How can these lives that were sacrificed protect a homeland?

I remembered the images of detainees, martyrs and wounded victims of the great Syrian revolution. I remembered the chants of young people during the demonstrations: "We will die, we will die, so that the homeland may live.”

Did these people truly think they were going to die? Did the Turks who took to the streets think about death?

Without a doubt, they were aware of the risk, and they were prepared to die for their homeland.

Another story illustrates how Syrians experienced that night of the coup attempt. I recount it through the testimony of a friend of mine.

He was still on the outskirts of Damascus. As usual, the electricity was cut off: no communications, no television. Suddenly, they heard intense gunfire. At first, they paid little attention, because gunfire had become an ordinary part of life, even when there were no clashes: it could be a wedding celebration or the funeral of a member of the Baathist militias.

But that night, the gunfire intensified, grew louder and seemed to come from every direction, mixed with the sound of medium and perhaps heavy weapons. The residents of the neighborhood were terrified, and the family gathered, as they often did, in the bathroom, away from the windows.

My friend tried to look through the window toward the nearby military checkpoint, but the darkness was absolute.

Rumors and fears began to circulate among the residents. Some considered moving families and children down into the basement, believing that something serious was happening outside.

Then a neighbor arrived by car and told them that the men at the checkpoint, unlike usual, were laughing, celebrating, drinking and firing into the air. They had even let him pass without inspection, telling him: "Keep going. It’s over. Erdoğan has fallen.”

My friend continues: "Shortly afterward, another neighbor arrived with confirmation of the news. One of his relatives had seen a breaking news report on television announcing a military coup in Türkiye. We then understood that the reason behind the gunfire was the celebration of Assad’s army, his militia and his supporters over this event.

Soon after, two cars belonging to the militia entered the neighborhood, firing into the air, chanting slogans in praise of their master Assad, and shouting so that all the residents could hear:

‘There you go, Erdoğan has fallen, you dogs!’”

The celebration by the Syrian regime and the gunfire that accompanied it were not merely a momentary outburst of joy. The regime firmly believed that the fall of the Turkish government would alter Ankara’s position on the Syrian issue, especially given the existence of influential currents within the Turkish opposition that openly expressed a willingness not to make confronting the crimes of the Assad regime a priority and sought to restore relations with Damascus while addressing Türkiye’s security concerns through cooperation with it. Some of their lawmakers even went as far as visiting Damascus.

This episode revealed the depth of mutual influence and interaction between Türkiye and Syria. The issue of Syrian refugees became a central topic in debates among Turkish political forces, while the profound shifts in Turkish policy after the coup attempt also had repercussions in Syria, where they were reflected in a retreat driven by both domestic and international factors.

Another dimension of the impact of the failed coup attempt on Syrians, particularly detainees, can be found in the accounts shared by some prisoners about that night and the days that followed.

Among former Syrian detainees, testimonies have circulated suggesting that the failure of the coup attempt in Türkiye on July 15, 2016, affected the behavior of some guards inside the prisons of the Assad regime. According to these accounts, several members of the security services expressed their disappointment that Erdoğan had remained in power, repeating phrases such as: "Erdoğan is still there,” or "We were waiting for his fall.” Others allegedly used the event to break the detainees’ morale, telling them that no one would come to save them.

Some survivors also recounted that the days following the coup attempt witnessed, in some detention centers, an escalation in beatings, humiliation and acts of torture.

To this day, whenever the anniversary of July 15 comes around, I do not remember only a night when the Turkish people defeated a coup attempt. I also remember a night when thousands of Syrians stood beside them, with their hearts and minds. For those who have lost a homeland once know very well that homelands are not protected by slogans, but by people willing to defend them whatever the cost.

People may differ in their political interpretation of that night, but a Syrian who witnessed tanks bombing his village and his home cannot look indifferently at a tank advancing in another homeland.

Therefore, when many Syrians took to the streets of Istanbul and Ankara, they were not defending a man. They were defending a simple idea, one they had learned in the most painful way possible: "And the red freedom has a door, struck by every bloodied hand.”