Military committee officers aligned with the Arab Socialist Baath Party take power in Damascus, impose emergency law and begin purging rivals — the start of single-party rule that would last, under one family for most of it, until December 2024.
Why it mattersThe coup fused party, army and security services into a single apparatus of rule. Emergency law imposed in 1963 remained in force for 48 years — lifted, nominally, only weeks into the 2011 uprising.