stylistic:tone
Post-independence

The increasing disagreements between Aleppo and Damascus led eventually to the split of the National Block into two factions: the National Party, established in Damascus in 1946, and the People's Party, established in Aleppo in 1948 by Rushdi al-Kikhya, Nazim Qudsi and Mustafa Bey Barmada. An underlying cause of the disagreement, in addition to the union with Iraq, was Aleppo's intention to relocate the capital from Damascus. The issue of the capital became an open debate matter in 1950 when the Popular Party presented a constitution draft that called Damascus a "temporary capital."

The first coup d'état in modern Syrian history was carried out in March 1949 by an army officer from Aleppo, Hussni Zaim. However, lured by the absolute power he enjoyed as a dictator, Zaim soon developed a pro-Egyptian, pro-Western orientation and abandoned the cause of union with Iraq. This incited a second coup only four months after his. The second coup, led by Sami Hinnawi (also officer from Aleppo), empowered the Popular Party and actively sought to realize the union with Iraq. The news of an imminent union with Iraq incited a third coup the same year: in December 1949, Adib Shishakly led a coup preempting a union with Iraq that was about to be declared.

Soon after Shishakly's domination ended in 1954, a union with Egypt under Gamal Abdul Nasser was implemented in 1958. The union, however, collapsed three and a half years later when a junta of young Damascene officers carried out a separatist coup. Aleppo resisted the separatist coup, but eventually it had no choice but to recognize the new government.

In March 1963 a coalition of Baathists, Nasserists, and Socialists launched a new coup whose declared objective was to restore the union with Egypt. However, the new government only restored the flag of the union. Soon thereafter disagreement between the Baathists and the Nasserists over the restoration of the union became a crisis, and the Baathists ousted the Nasserists from power. The Nasserists, most of whom were from the Aleppine middle class, responded with an insurgency in Aleppo in July 1963.

Again, the Ba'ath government tried to absorb the dissent of the Syrian middle class (whose center of political activism was Aleppo) by putting to the front Amin al-Hafiz, a Baathist military officer from Aleppo.

President Hafez al-Assad, who came to power in 1970, relied on support from the business class in Damascus. This gave Damascus further advantage over Aleppo, and hence Damascus came to dominate the Syrian economy. The strict centralization of the Syrian state, the intentional direction of resources towards Damascus, and the hegemony Damascus enjoys over the Syrian economy made it increasingly hard for Aleppo to compete. Despite this, Aleppo remained a nationally important economic and cultural center.

On 16 June 1979 thirty-two military cadets were massacred by antigovernmental Islamist rebel group Muslim Brotherhood. In the subsequent violence around fifty people were killed. On 10 July a further twenty-two Syrian soldiers were killed. Both terrorist attacks were part of the Islamist uprising in Syria. In 1980, events escalated into the a large-scale military operation in Aleppo, where Syrian government responded with military and security forces, sending in tens of thousands of troops backed by tanks, armored vehicles and helicopters. Several hundred rebels were killed in and around city and eight thousand were arrested. By February 1981, the Islamist uprising in the city of Aleppo was suppressed.

Since the late 1990s, Aleppo has become one of the fastest growing cities in the Levant and the Middle East. The opening of the industrial city of Shaykh Najjar and the influx of new investments and flow of the new industries after 2004 also contributed to the development of the city. In 2006, Aleppo was named by the Islamic Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) as the capital of Islamic culture.