The US, UK, French and Turkish envoys were among those designated "personae non gratae". Many have already left.
President Bashar al-Assad has blamed outside powers for Syria's divisions.
Meanwhile, the UN has said the Syrian government has agreed to allow aid agencies to enter the four provinces that have seen the most violence.
"This agreement was secured in Damascus with the government there, in writing," John Ging, the director of operations for UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) told reporters in Geneva after a meeting of the Syrian Humanitarian Forum.
"Freedom of movement, unimpeded access for humanitarian action within Syria, is what it's all about now. The good faith of the [Syrian] government will be tested on this issue today, tomorrow and every day," he added.
The UN estimates that one million people are in need of assistance inside Syria, and that the number will likely increase after further assessments.
The UN has been trying for months to get its aid workers into Syria, but with little success, reports the BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva. Visa applications have been delayed or denied, and supplies of aid blocked.
In a separate development, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, urged the international community to continue to support the peace plan negotiated by the UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, Chinese state TV said.
Last week, at least 13 countries expelled top Syrian diplomats in protest at the massacre of more than 100 people, including 49 children, in the Houla area of Homs province. Turkey expelled all Syrian embassy staff.
In what it described as a reciprocal move on Tuesday, the Syrian government announced that 17 diplomats from the US, UK, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany and Canada were now considered "personae non gratae".
All Turkish diplomatic staff were also declared unwelcome.
"The Syrian Arab Republic still believes in the importance of dialogue based on principles of equality and mutual respect," a foreign ministry statement said.
"We hope the countries that initiated these steps will adopt those principles, which would allow relations to return to normal again."
The BBC Jim Muir in Beirut says it will be a long time before the Western states are prepared to re-establish diplomatic ties.
Many have already withdrawn their ambassadors on security grounds or for political reasons, our correspondent adds.
US ambassador Robert Ford was called back to Washington in October over fears for his safety, while all British embassy staff were withdrawn in March on security grounds.
France also closed its embassy that month in protest at the "scandalous" repression of dissent by the government.
On Sunday, President Assad told parliament that Syria was facing not an internal crisis but an external war, waged against it because of its support for resistance to Israel.
In his first public comment on the massacre at Houla, in which 108 people were killed on 25 May, Mr Assad said that even "monsters" would not have carried out such an act and it should prompt an end to bloodshed.
Survivors and human rights groups blamed the army and shabiha militiamen allied to the government for the deaths.
Tuesday's diplomatic move by the Syrian government came as activists said at least seven people had been killed in violence across the country.
Four civilians were killed overnight in a "huge military operation" in Kafrouaid, a village in the Jabal al-Zawiya area of the northern province of Idlib, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Troops and pro-regime militiamen backed by tanks were also reported to have stormed the town of Kfar Zita in the central province of Hama, and killed two rebel fighters in the Mediterranean port city of Latakia.
Several villages south-west of the central city of Homs earlier came under intense army artillery- and mortar-fire, leaving three people dead, according to the Local Co-ordination Committees, an activist network.
The UN says at least 9,000 people have died since pro-democracy protests began in March 2011. In April, the Syrian government reported that 6,143 Syrian citizens had been killed by "terrorist groups".
Source: BBC News
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