Hassan Turkmani

Hasan Ali Turkmani (27 January 1935 – 18 July 2012) was a Syrian military officer and politician who served as army chief of staff from 2002 to 2004 and minister of defence from 2004 to 2009, then as assistant vice president with the rank of minister and chief of crisis operations. ¹ He was killed in the bombing of a Central Crisis Management Cell meeting at the national security building in Damascus on 18 July 2012, one of the most prominent assassinations of the Syrian civil war. ^{1 2}

Turkmani was born in Aleppo in 1935 into a Syrian Sunni Muslim family of Turkmen origin, according to the English article; the Arabic article likewise records his birth in Aleppo to parents of Turkmen origin. ^{1 2} He joined the Syrian Army as an infantry officer in 1955 according to the English article, while the Arabic article dates his joining to 1954 and his graduation from the military college as a field artillery officer, followed by command-and-staff master's studies and the higher staff course. ^{1 2} He was among the first officers to train on the new mechanised units, and completed a staff course in East Germany in 1965 and a command and staff course in Egypt in 1969. ¹

Turkmani commanded the 9th Mechanized Infantry Division, which fought a crucial rearguard action around Damascus in the 1973 war, and was promoted to major general in 1975 according to the English article (the Arabic article dates his rank of lieutenant general to 1978 and full general to 1988). ^{1 2} He held general-headquarters posts — director of officers' affairs, director of the political administration, and deputy chief of staff from 1982 to 2002 — and served on the Ba'ath Party's central committee from 2000. ^{1 2}

On 23 January 2002 he was appointed chief of staff, replacing Ali Aslan; the English article notes that, since he was a Sunni Muslim, his appointment was considered a move to restore a touch of sectarian diversity to a military-intelligence establishment dominated by Alawites. ¹ On 12 May 2004 he became minister of defence, replacing Mustafa Tlass, and was succeeded as chief of staff by Ali Habib Mahmoud; in June 2006 he visited Tehran and signed a strategic alliance agreement with his Iranian counterpart. ¹

In June 2009 Ali Habib Mahmud replaced him as defence minister, and on 3 June 2009 President Bashar al-Assad appointed him assistant vice president with the rank of minister, chief of crisis operations and military advisor to Vice President Farouk Sharaa. ¹ In June 2011 he led a special military and security delegation to Ankara to meet Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. ¹

This section presents positions reported in the sources; it is not the museum's verdict on any of them.

The English article states that Turkmani, as chief of crisis operations, "was widely blamed for the campaign of torture in Syria" during the uprising — a formulation that attributes the assessment to general report rather than to a named body. ¹ On 19 May 2012 the Free Syrian Army's Damascus council announced that one of its operatives had poisoned all eight members of the Central Crisis Management Cell and that it believed at least six, including Turkmani, had been killed; Turkmani and interior minister Mohammad al-Shaar denied their rumoured deaths on state television, calling them "categorically baseless". ¹

On 18 July 2012 Turkmani was assassinated in a bombing by opposition militants, in the article's account, on a meeting of the Central Crisis Management Cell at the national security building in Rawda Square, north-west Damascus; defence minister Dawoud Rajiha, his deputy Assef Shawkat and other top officials were also killed, Turkmani died of his wounds, and dozens of civilians were injured. ^{1 2} A state funeral was held for him, Rajiha and Shawkat in Damascus on 20 July 2012. ¹

His son Muhammad Bilal owned the weekly political magazine Abyad wa Aswad ("Black and White"). ¹

• "Hasan Turkmani", English Wikipedia, revision of 19 July 2026. ¹
• «حسن تركماني», Arabic Wikipedia, revision of 8 September 2026. ²
• Wikidata item Q1588608. ³