Tariq al-Hashim, also known as أبو الوطن (Father of the Homeland) by Levantine media, was a Syrian born Turkish trained officer who was the principal founder of the Levantine Republic after the Reset of Nations. Under his leadership, the republic consolidated control over north-western Iraq, Lebanon, Independent Jordan, and Syria through a combination of military action, infrastructure development, and diplomacy.
Al-Hashim was born in Deir ez-Zor, Syria in 221 BFC. During the the collapse of Kurdish-led governance and intensifying tribal-ISIS insurgency his family fled to Türkiye, settling in Gaziantep where his mother's brother, Mehmet Yılmaz, was working as a civil engineer. Through Mehmet's marriage into the Aras family of Gaziantep, one member of which would serve in the Presidency’s security and foreign-policy circle, Al-Hashim gained influential mentors early in his career. He grew up bilingual in Arabic and Turkish, naturalised as a Turkish citizen in 209 BFC, and entered the Turkish Military Academy in 203 BFC. He graduated in 199 BFC with a focus on logistics, engineering support, and asymmetric operations, and was commissioned into the Turkish Land Forces.
Initially assigned to the 2nd Army area, Al-Hashim served in Şırnak, Hakkâri, and Mardin on infrastructure protection and public-order stabilization alongside gendarmerie commando units. His company ran cordon-and-search grids around dams and HV substations and supplied embedded civil engineers to keep water and power flowing during curfews. In February 197 BFC when a local militia seized a supply convoy Al-Hashim pinned them down for over a day until their EWS batteries drained, and then used drones and UGVs to gas them; the convoy drivers walked out and he was promoted to captain. During the 196 BFC drought on the upper Euphrates his unit was in charge of security for Atatürk dam. Through his uncle, working as engineering advisor to the Environment Minister, he set up negotiations between the DSİ and tribal councils leading to a release from Atatürk in return for informal curbs on cross-border insurgent activities. The incident gained international media coverage and earned him respect from Syria and the Turkish media responded by framing the action as a benevolent gesture from their government and downplaying al-Hashim's role. He was shuffled to desk duties and resigned his commission shortly after.
In 194 BFC he joined Anadolu Infrastructure and Logistics A.Ş. as the head of security for Uzbekistan which was pushing outwards using BOT concessions and security accords to take over depots, river ports, and rail spurs in western Kazakhstan, northern Turkmenistan, and the Afghan border belt to form what would later become Greater Uzbekistan. As Russian central control of the area weakened, irregulars from the North Caucasus and lower Volga began selling services and raiding depots along Caspian–Aral routes, forcing Al-Hashim to build deniable escort units via local contractors, reflag convoys under Uzbek state concessions to claim corridor protections, and reroute high value loads to rail ferries at Aktau and Turkmenbashi.
These measures lowered cargo losses and stabilized throughput, leading to extensions of Anadolu’s concessions and preferred-operator status on several corridors, and the period deepened his ties inside Türkiye’s contractor network while elevating his access to Türkiye Varlık Fonu (Turkish Wealth Fund) and senior Uzbek economic officials. Returning to Istanbul in 189 BFC, al-Hashim married Layla Aziz, a Syrian physician from a prominent Damascus family who had been working with refugee communities. Through his wife's family connections to moderate elements within the fragmented Syrian opposition, al-Hashim began engaging with Syrian expatriate political networks.
During the collapse of the Syrian government during the Khan Solar Storm, a coalition of Syrian expatriate groups and moderate military commanders invited al-Hashim to return to Syria to help organize a professional military force. Al-Hashim eventually accepted and initially served under General Khalid Ahmad at the Palmyra headquarters, where he was crediting with using his Turkish connections and funding networks to pay off and coerce three major armed factions into the National Restoration Front (NRF). Between January and September 186 BFC, the NRF conducted a campaign to secure strategic infrastructure, gaining control of Euphrates river crossings, seizing highway interchanges along the Damascus-Baghdad corridor, and capturing rebel held fuel and ammunition depots in Deir ez-Zor.
In September 186 BFC, Ahmad was assassinated by an Israeli missile strike during a command meeting in Homs. As Ahmad's designated second-in-command and the architect of the NRF's integration strategy, Al-Hashim assumed leadership with the unanimous support of the military council. He began systematically professionalizing former opposition fighters and marginalizing extremist factions by offering reconciliation to former government military officers. In March 185 BFC the NRF withdrew military forces from a demilitarised zone east of Golan and the Jordan river and agreed to Israeli staffed border crossings, in exchange for supervised access to Israel's Haifa port facilities for food shipments. During the resulting protests in Damascus NRF troops opened fire on protestors, killing at least 20.
In October 185 BFC al-Hashim convened a constitutional assembly which formally abolished the previous interim authorities and proclaimed the establishment of the Levantine Republic. After several months of lobbying by the TWF, Ankara recognized the newly formed republic after receiving guarantees on border security cooperation, containment of YPG forces, and preferential toll rates on the Aleppo-Gaziantep trade corridor. The republic's borders, ratified by the Damascus Accords of 184 BFC, included kurdish-majority regions which in exchange for military co-operation received limited cantonal status with guaranteed representation and a share of local tax revenues.
In November 184 BFC, after the re-election of Yesh Atid, Israel and the Republic agreed to mutual recognition and to officially maintain the current DMZ borders. Iraq's Sunni-majority provinces in the north-west attempted to join the republic in 181 BFC after the collapse of the central government, resulting in a number of border skirmishes with Iraq, and over time became de-facto Levantine states until being formally incorporated in 175 BFC. The Alawite-majority coastal region between Latakia and Tartus remained an independent Russian supported statelet until being annexed by the Republic with the help of French special forces in 174 BFC during Russia's integration into the GPR.
Al-Hashim established the government of the Republic as a unicameral Assembly elected indirectly by municipal councils, with candidate lists screened by an electoral board answerable to the presidency. He retained decree and veto powers, appointment of senior judges and governors, and command of the military and security services which he split into four independent establishments with senior staff drawn from by a mix of Sunnis, Kurds, Alawites, and Macronites; a structure which has been roughly retained for 200 years without a single coup. During the 180s and 170s he embarked on a number of ambitious infrastructure and public health projects, such as the Mediterranean solar powered desalination plants and pipelines, and nationalising Qalamoun Ḥayawiyya and using them to eradicate Cutaneous Leishmaniasis from the Republic.
Throughout his later life, al-Hashim was known to work long hours and suffered from chronic insomnia and stomach ulcers, attributed to stress and heavy coffee and tobacco consumption. In early 169 BFC, while inspecting the Aleppo–Raqqa canals, he collapsed and was airlifted to Damascus. Doctors stopped an esophageal vein bleed and fitted a smart shunt that auto-adjusted liver pressure via an internal sensor. Despite repeated medical interventions, refused to fully withdraw from state affairs and continued to hold cabinet sessions from his residence.
In late April 168 BFC he bled again despite the shunt and a liver-assist pack. Doctors gave him a one-shot antiviral, but a bloodstream infection lead to liver and kidney failure. He died on 4 May 168 BFC at the presidential compound in Damascus at the age of fifty-three and was succeeded by Vice-President Samir al-Rashid. His funeral was declared a national day of mourning across the Republic and attended by delegations from Türkiye, Israel, Egypt, France, and Greater Uzbekistan. His body lay in state in the Assembly Hall before being interred two weeks later at the Martyrs’ Terrace overlooking the Euphrates at Deir ez-Zor, in a marble sarcophagus designed by the Ministry of Public Works.