ISTANBUL — The political and armed Syrian opposition forces appear to be drawing closer to a unified position, rallying around their rejection of UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura's plans for regime change through political transition involving President Bashar al-Assad.

After the Syrian revolution broke out in March 2011, several types of opposition movements formed. The Syrian public was divided after the first year between those who supported arming the opposition and forming the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and those who wanted to maintain the peaceful political movement.

However, now four years into the revolution, being armed has become a reality imposed on everyone. But the revolutionary brigades under the FSA’s umbrella always lacked a unified leadership; they are organized groups with each group following its own leader. The groups were able to establish a loose structure for the purposes of organization, planning and joint work. Under that network, the groups turned into alliances, as some of them merged together, but they still weren't able to agree on a single command. The opposition's factions held different ideologies, as did their backers, some of which had their own ideas about shaping Syria’s future.

After many Western and Arab meetings and initiatives, which failed one after the other, in July 2014, the UN Security Council finally appointed de Mistura as a UN envoy and mediator between the Syrian regime and the opposition. A year later, in August, de Mistura formed four committees to change the current Syrian regime through a political transition. These committees were to work with both the Assad regime and the opposition to solve the Syrian crisis.