Elections as a Façade for Syria’s Islamist Rulers

Syria’s President Al-Sharaa Talks of Democracy and Reform but His Government Appears Systemically Opposed to It

Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa in September 2025.

Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa in September 2025.

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Syria held a parliamentary election on October 5, 2025, the first since the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December 2024. It was a poorly staged charade, a continuation of the country’s sham transition to democracy.

In a process tightly controlled by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the vote elected 140 representatives for the 210-member legislature, with al-Sharaa directly selecting the remaining seventy members. In a model similar to Somalia, voting was limited to an electorate of only around 6,000 people, out of a population of more than 24 million. Subcommittees appointed by al-Sharaa’s high electoral commission appointed the electors. Al-Sharaa might just as well have selected all 210 members himself.

Syrians are right to see the election as yet another exclusionary tool against those opposing al-Sharaa’s policies.

Al-Sharaa hailed the process as historic. In reality, there was nothing historic about it. Stage-managed elections long have been a fixture of Syria’s political landscape, even under the Assad dynasty. For one, voting for the People’s Assembly excluded vast areas beyond Damascus’s control, namely the Kurdish-led region in the northeast and the Druze region in the southwest. This amounts to an indirect admission by the interim authorities that the election was incomplete. A parliament will leave two significant segments of Syrian society unrepresented for the next two and a half years.

For this reason, Syrians are right to see the election as yet another exclusionary tool against those opposing al-Sharaa’s policies. In the past, the Syrian government has argued that the country was not ready for a general election—a point that, while valid, obscures why Damascus choose to proceed with this vote during the transitional period. It simply could have waited until the five-year transition is over, rather than presenting it as a legitimate process.

Over five decades, the Assads reduced the Syrian parliament to a powerless institution. Syrians often derided it as an “assembly of applause,” a reference to its subservience to the president’s will. Rather than rebuilding public trust in this institution, the recent vote will only deepen cynicism toward it. With excessive powers already at his disposal, al-Sharaa’s creation of this parliament will serve primarily as a vehicle to advance his long-term agenda, part of which is to reshape Syria into an Islamist entity.

Yet even this façade of legitimacy seems incomplete as power dynamics on the ground continue to evolve, particularly among the Kurds and Druze. Simply projecting the image of a legislative body is unlikely to help al-Sharaa extend his control to all of Syrian territory without sustainable agreements with all local stakeholders.

There are no longer realistic prospects for a democratic transition in Syria.

The Syrian government under al-Sharaa and his Islamist allies has demonstrated a lack of seriousness in fostering a genuine dialogue that includes all segments of the country into the political process. A recent example is a presidential decree on national holidays that excluded the Kurdish New Year, Newruz. In 1986, President Hafez al-Assad designed the day as Mother’s Day; al-Sharaa left this unchanged.

Syria will have a larger election at some point after the transition concludes, but it will be dominated by al-Sharaa and his allies, thanks to the ongoing transformations that he implements now.

Many in the West, White House, and some Washington think tanks seek to put a positive spin on al-Sharaa’s commitment to dialogue, democracy, and reform. This is naïve. There are no longer realistic prospects for a democratic transition in Syria. The Islamist rulers are systemically opposed to it.

Sirwan Kajjo is a journalist and researcher specializing in Kurdish politics, Islamic militancy, and Syrian affairs. He has contributed two book chapters on Syria and the Kurds, published by Indiana University Press and Cambridge University Press. His writings on Syrian and Kurdish issues have appeared in the Middle East Forum, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and other prominent think tanks and publications. Kajjo is also the author of Nothing But Soot, a novel set in Syria. He holds a BA in government and international politics from George Mason University.
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