In 1987, Muhammed Faris became a national hero after going into space with the Soviets. Now living in exile in Turkey, he has a new mission – fighting for his fellow refugees

The Neil Armstrong of the Arab world has an office in a ramshackle building in Istanbul’s Fatih or “Little Syria”. Muhammed Faris is a refugee, just like the people milling outside, facing up to the hardest challenge in his life; one that has already seen the roles of fighter pilot, spaceman, military advisor to the Assad regime; protester, rebel and defector.

In Syria, Faris is a national hero, with a school, airport and roads named after him. Medals on the wall of his office honour his achievements as an astronaut (or, strictly speaking, a cosmonaut). Here, hundreds of miles from his birthplace, Aleppo, he campaigns for democratic change in Syria, “through words, not weapons”.

In 1985, he was one of four young Syrian men vying to join the Interkosmos training programme, for allies of the Soviet Union, at Star City just outside Moscow. There had been one Arab in space before, Sultan Bin Salman Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family, but never a professional Arab spaceman. Despite the thawing of the cold war, US relations with Iran and its ally Syria were deteriorating. Syrian ties to the Soviet Union were strong: Russia supported Bashar’s father, Hafez Assad, in his rise to power in a coup in 1970. In return, the Soviets were allowed to open a naval base in Tartus, which remains in Russian hands today.

He was one of 60 Syrian candidates at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre and made it down to the last four. Two were Alawite, the same sect as Assad, one was Druze and the fourth, Faris, was Sunni. As a member of the sect that makes up more than 80% of the country’s population, a perceived threat to the leadership, Faris was there in name only. Assad sent a delegation to the Soviet Union to “help” the Russians choose their man. The most senior candidate, an Alawite colonel, had a medical problem, so he was out, and the Druze man failed to make the grade. It was clear that Faris, the Sunni, was the more suitable of the two remaining candidates. But, as Faris puts it, “it would have been easier to choose me as a new prime minister than [for the Syrian group] to make me their first spaceman”. The Russians overruled Assad’s delegation, and Faris went into training, followed by a trip to the Mir space station in July 1987.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Muhammed Faris in Istanbul … highest-ranking defector from the Assad regime. Photograph: Emre Rende/The Guardian

“Those seven days 23 hours and five minutes changed my life,” says Faris. With Russian cosmonauts, he carried out scientific experiments and photographed Syria from space. “When you have seen the whole world through your window there is no us and them, no politics.” While in space, Faris decided to quit the military and make it his mission to educate his people in science and astronomy, “to pass on this privileged view I had been given”.

When Faris returned to Earth, he was a national hero. He was a man of humble origins who had only qualified as a pilot two years before he was chosen, and had battled his way through the ranks to reach the stars. Faris asked the president to fund a national space science institute to help other Syrians to follow him into space. The answer was an emphatic “no”.

“He [Hafez Assad] wanted to keep his people uneducated and divided, with limited understanding,” says Faris. “That’s how dictators stay in power. The very thought of giving the people the vision that a space science institute would give them was dangerous.” Instead, Faris was installed at the air force college, teaching hundreds of young men to fly jet fighters. He may have been Top Gun but Faris says his were “empty powers”.

When Hafez died and his son, Bashar, took over in 2000, Faris was among the first to meet him. “Like his father, Bashar was an enemy to society,” says Faris. In his role as head of the country’s air-force academy he became a military advisor, hoping he might be allowed to head quietly into academia in 2011. But by then, the Arab spring was spreading across the region.

“When the protests started, they were nothing but peaceful, for months on end.” Faris says he and his wife joined in, marching in Damascus, and calling for peaceful reform. They were threatened by supporters of the Assad regime for doing so but did not stop. “These were my people, all of them are my people, our people,” he says. Faris and his wife discussed the protests directly with the leadership, calling on them to make gentle changes, but “they [the Assads] thought they were gods”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Faris (centre) on board Mir. Photograph: SVF2/UIG via Getty Images

When the violence began, Faris watched as his former students were “brainwashed” into attacking their own people. “They were told if they did not attack they would be killed by the rebels.” Today, some of Faris’s best former students are military leaders, controlling airports and crucial government sites but most have left. “It is mainly just the Alawites who have stayed by Assad’s side,” Faris says.

Soon after, Faris began planning his escape. “Four times, we were ready but I could see it wasn’t going to work. We considered many routes.” With three children and a wife to think about, he left nothing to chance. Eventually, they packed what they could in a car without arousing suspicion and drove over the Turkish border in August 2012. He became, and remains, the highest-ranking defector from the Assad regime.

Putin is not the Soviet Union. These Russians, they are killers and criminals and supporters of murderers

In his Istanbul office, the 64-year-old still has the medals he won from the Soviet Union: the Order of Lenin and Hero of the Soviet Union award, the highest of all honours. His former colleagues and friends in Russia have offered help. But he spits in disgust at the idea of claiming asylum there. “Putin is not the Soviet Union. These Russians, they are killers and criminals and supporters of murderers.

“They have blood on their hands of more than 2,000 civilians,” he says. Since he arrived in Turkey, Russia has invited him to many conferences, but he has refused until certain conditions are met. “They must stop their violence. The problem is I understand the way they think, unfortunately, so I cannot be their friend.”

He has had offers from European NGOs to help with asylum applications elsewhere. That upsets him too, because he thinks they want to use him for political gain. “They did not intervene when they were needed,” he says, referring to both European and US governments, “and they oppose my ideals, so I cannot live there.”

For now, he is not going anywhere. He is regularly consulted by the Turkish government about Syrian refugees’ rights, and also discusses the military situation via his old contacts in the Turkish air force. He is also part of the Syrian National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, an anti-violence, anti-Assad grouping that meets in Spain.

“My dream is to sit in my country with my garden and see children play outside without the fear of bombs,” says Faris. “We will see it, I know we will see it. I just wanted a better future for my children, but external influence on the revolution has messed it all up. It’s very difficult.” With tears in his eyes, he speaks of the early days of the revolution. He believes that the rise of Isis is partly the fault of other countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and says he does not have a solution for the current situation. Yet he is certain that “it’s not religion and weapons that will solve this, it is hope”.

He repeatedly refers to the fortitude of the people in his hometown of Aleppo, one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. “The Syrian civilisation is 10,000 years old. It will survive this attempt by the Assads to destroy it. It has survived worse.” But now the city’s days may be numbered, and hope might be all that is left behind. “From afar, when the Earth was so small, I really felt in my heart I could make a big difference in the world,” he says. “It has not been easy.”