He was imprisoned again in 1958 under Nasser for opposing the merger of Syria and Egypt in the United Arab Republic and held for sixteen months.

However, it later took a strong opposition stance, especially from 1976 on after the Syrian intervention in favour of the Maronites right-wing government in the Lebanese Civil War.

This led to repression of the party, which was stepped up at the beginning of the 1980s when the Hafez al-Assad government felt itself under increasing pressure from both Islamists and the secular opposition.

Based on interviews with al-Turk, journalist Robin Wright reports he was "locked way in a windowless underground cell, about the length of his body or the size of a small elevator compartment, at an intelligence headquarters."

For the first thirteen years of his imprisonment he was allowed no communication from, or information about, his friends and family, including his two young daughters.

This was followed by an outburst of political debate and demands for democratic changes, known as the Damascus Spring, and al-Turk resumed a prominent role.

His statement on al Jazeera television in August 2001 that "the dictator has died" was seen as a direct cause of renewed repression by an angered government, and al-Turk himself was arrested some days later on September 1, 2001, subjected to a trial widely seen as unfair before a state security court.

In the same year, he also emerged as a prominent name in the Damascus Declaration, a pro-democracy coalition of Syrian opposition activists and organizations.

[6] Reflecting on his decades-long involvement with the Syrian Communist Party, al-Turk revealed to Le Monde: "Since I joined in the 1950s, clandestine life has been a tradition.