Syrian interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa this week appointed the final 70 members of Syria’s new 210-seat People’s Assembly, completing the first post-Assad legislature since the fall of the regime in 2024. As BBC News reports, the parliament combines 140 members elected through regional electoral colleges in October 2025 with 70 presidential appointees — one-third of the total. Among those appointed are relatives of martyrs, survivors of detention and chemical attacks, and representatives from all 14 provinces. The assembly is scheduled to hold its inaugural session next week. Yet the parliament’s creation has been criticised by 14 Syrian civil society groups as “plagued by deep structural flaws,” and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces have rejected the elected members from northern provinces as exclusionary.
The received wisdom
The mainstream framing of Syria’s transition process is broadly optimistic. After thirteen years of civil war, the fall of a regime that gassed its own citizens, and the chaos of the post-Assad vacuum, any functioning legislative institution represents progress. Al-Sharaa’s willingness to appoint women and minority representatives — correcting the underrepresentation that emerged from the electoral college process, in which only six women and ten minority candidates were elected — is cited as evidence of genuine inclusivity. The UN Deputy Special Envoy’s assessment that Syria is at “a critical phase, with opportunity and fragility existing side-by-side” captures the dominant diplomatic tone: cautious hope, calibrated encouragement. On this view, the imperfections of the new parliament are growing pains to be managed rather than structural problems to be condemned.
A different read
Let us take the optimistic reading seriously before examining its limits. It is genuinely true that Syria’s new parliament is an improvement on its predecessor, a body that served for decades as a theatrical prop for Assad family rule. The inclusion of people who were imprisoned under Assad, of chemical attack survivors, of representatives from all fourteen provinces, is not nothing. Transitional institutions in post-authoritarian contexts are rarely pristine; they reflect the balance of power and the practical constraints of the moment.
And yet the structure of the new legislature should concern anyone who thinks durable democratic institutions require more than good intentions. Consider the arithmetic: the president appoints one-third of parliament directly. He also controlled — directly or indirectly — the Higher Committee that administered the electoral colleges that selected the other two-thirds. As BBC News documents, Syrian civil society groups have characterised this structure as one in which “the president’s direct/indirect influence over the Higher Committee and electoral colleges makes elections symbolic.” Furthermore, the president retains the power to replace any member who loses their seat, meaning even the elected component exists at presidential sufferance.
This matters because the history of post-authoritarian transitions is littered with assemblies that looked like parliaments but functioned as window-dressing for executive power. The pattern is familiar: a leader who genuinely overthrows a hated regime uses the goodwill generated by that act to establish institutions that replicate in softer form the power structures he displaced. The new institution acquires legitimacy by association with the revolution while serving, in practice, as a tool for consolidating power. Turkey under Erdoğan in the 2010s, Egypt under el-Sisi after 2013, and Russia under Putin in the early 2000s all followed variations of this trajectory. None of those outcomes was predetermined; each had a moment at which a different institutional design might have produced a different result.
The territorial fragmentation is equally troubling. Suweida province, a Druze-majority area in which sectarian fighting killed 1,700 people in July 2025, still lies outside state control and has not held electoral college polls. The northern provinces of Raqqa and Hassakeh saw polls delayed seven months while government forces captured territory from the Kurdish SDF. Twenty or more Kurdish parties have rejected the resulting lawmakers entirely. A parliament that represents neither the Druze south nor the Kurdish north cannot credibly claim to represent Syria. The risk of Suweida’s secession calls noted in the BBC report are a direct consequence of this exclusion.
There is something to be said for the conservative instinct that functioning institutions are better than perfect blueprints. Syria needs a working legislature now, not after some imagined moment of perfect democratic readiness. But the structure of the new assembly — with its built-in presidential dominance, its unresolved territorial exclusions, and its weak claim to popular mandate — does not suggest a system designed to constrain executive power. It suggests a system designed to legitimise it.
What to watch
The assembly’s first session will be revealing: note whether it takes any action that constrains or embarrasses the executive, or whether its initial legislative agenda is entirely presidential in origin. Watch for whether Suweida’s status is addressed through negotiation or coercion — the latter would confirm the government’s preference for military solutions over political compromise. The Kurdish parties’ boycott is a significant early test; any outreach or concession to the SDF-affiliated political structures would signal genuine pluralism, while continued exclusion would confirm the parliament’s ceremonial character. International recognition and aid flows linked to the parliament’s legitimacy will be the external pressure point.
— J