General Information

Capital:

Damascus 1,394,322 (1994 est.)

Area:

185,180 sq km (71,500 sq mi)

Form of government

Republic under military regime since March 1963

GDP per capita

Purchasing power parity-$2,500 (1999 est.)

Population

16,305,659

Note: In addition, there are about 38,200 people living in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights - 18,200 Arabs (16,500 Druze and 1,700 Alawites) and about 20,000 Israeli settlers (July 2000 est.).

Ethnic composition

Arab - 90.3%

Kurds, Armenians, other - 9.7%

Official Language(s)

Arabic (standard)

Minority Language(s)

Kurdish, Armenian, Aramaic, Turkic, Syriac, and Circassian is widely understood; while French and English are somewhat understood

According to the Ethnologue (Summer Institute of Linguistic, 1996) the number of languages listed for Syria is 16.

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