Fully Authoritarian
World’s Population
Population
HRF classifies Syria as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
In December 2024, militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) toppled the Ba’athist regime, led by the Assad family that had ruled Syria since 1970. In January 2025, the Syrian General Command appointed Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former commander of HTS, also commonly known asAbu Mohammad al-Jolani, as interim president. In March 2025, al-Sharaa issued a unilateral Constitutional Declaration that established a presidential system with parameters for a five-year transitional government led by the executive. Amid continued waves of sectarian violence and extrajudicial killings involving both transitional government forces and remnants of the former regime, separatist pressures in the Northeast, the South, and coastal regions, and troubling signs of continued kleptocracy and opacity within key governance roles under the transitional government, many in Syrian civil society nonetheless maintain cautious optimism that rests on the possibility that the transition culminates in free and fair elections, the adoption of a genuinely pluralistic constitutional order, and a decisive end to internal violence—conditions without which regime change alone has not yet yielded a free, united, or democratic Syria.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in Syria, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. While the regime held limited elections for the Interim People’s Assembly in October 2025, only 6,000 Syrians were permitted to vote or run for office as members of the regime-vetted electoral college. To further limit the nature of the elections, the interim regime has continued the Assad-era ban on political parties and directly appointed 70 out of a total of 192 representatives in parliament.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While the first year of transition has seen marked improvement from the repressive actions of the Assad regime, with greater margins of freedom for media, civil society, and protesters to operate, the interim regime continues to take measures to restrict or interfere with the freedoms of expression and association. The interim regime has blocked journalists from accessing politically sensitive areas and from reporting on topics sensitive to the regime. The executive also maintains Assad-era laws that grant it authority over the registration, funding, and administration of organizations to obstruct the work of independent organizations. The regime generally permits protests, but has at times arrested protesters and organizers under charges of espionage.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. While the interim regime has inherited state institutions that lack capacity due to financial, personnel, and infrastructural obstacles, it has also taken measures to subordinate all branches of government to the unelected president. Al-Sharaa maintains direct influence over the legislature, appointing more than one-third of its members and influencing the selection of candidates and voters of the electoral college. He also maintains the Assad-era authority to directly appoint members of the Supreme Constitutional Council and other higher courts, effectively monopolizing centralized control over the government and the course of Syria’s transition.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in Syria, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. As part of the five-year transitional process, the regime held limited elections for an Interim People’s Assembly in October 2025 in which an electoral college of just 6,000 Syrians was permitted to vote for 122 seats, while interim president al-Sharaa directly appointed a further 70 members. Per the interim Constitutional Declaration, interim MPs will serve a 30-month term with a mandate to pass and amend laws, ratify treaties, and approve the budget. Due to ongoing conflicts in different governorates, the regime withheld the remaining eight seats from three minority-majority regions that had not yet recognized the interim governing authority by the end of 2025.
Throughout the 2025 transitional election period, the regime systematically enjoyed significant and unfair campaign advantages. In the absence of electoral regulations and enforcement mechanisms, al-Sharaa appointed an 11-member Supreme Committee for People’s Assembly Elections, which in turn vetted and organized regional subcommittees in conjunction with the Department of Political Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The electoral subcommittees in each governorate established the electoral college, selecting the only Syrians allowed to stand for election as candidates or to cast a vote. Members of the former regime or security forces were not allowed to join an electoral college, and candidates were not allowed to run as members of established political parties, pushing campaigns to gain traction through informal local alliances that weakened coordinated political platforms and representational plurality vis-à-vis the central government. In addition to influence over the selection of candidates and voters, Decree No. 66 of 2025 grants al-Sharaa the power to directly appoint one-third of the Assembly. Interim regime officials claim that such measures were taken due to the difficulty of hosting elections in a country wrought by more than 15 years of conflict, mass emigration and displacement, and widespread institutional and infrastructure challenges, such as a lack of census data. However, critics argue that the interim electoral process and executive influence over the make up of the new People’s Assembly echo the sham elections and rubber-stamp parliament of the Assad regime, which, in the 2021 elections held in regime-controlled areas, barred opposition leaders from running with unjust legal barriers, and regularly manipulated election results through large-scale electoral fraud and voter suppression, ultimately claiming victory with an outsized 95% of votes. In other areas of control, armed opposition groups often installed public officials through sham civil processes while the groups stifled all forms of political opposition. Despite these worrying continuities, analysts have noted marked improvement in the top-down transitional process as compared to elections under Assad, whereby the Supreme Committee has taken measures to ensure transparency, consult local actors through public forums, and introduce procedures for submitting objections and appeals.
In addition to the aforementioned advantages, the regime configured representation in the interim parliament in such a way as to disenfranchise, or significantly overrepresent, particular groups of voters. Due to territorial and political disputes with the unelected transitional government under al-Sharaa, the Druze-majority governorate of Sweida, and Hassakeh and Raqqa governorates with significant Kurdish populations do not have representation in parliament as of December 2025. Further, Aleppo and Idlib, strongholds of the HTS-led interim government, received 42 seats to represent approximately 8 million people in the People’s Assembly, as compared to just 22 seats granted to approximately 7 million people living in the capital governorates of Damascus and Rural Damascus.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. The severe surveillance and repression of the Assad regime have somewhat improved since the HTS-led transitional regime took power at the end of 2024, allowing limited dissent and criticism. While total repression has eased, independent voices still face serious restrictions, particularly those in areas of the country with ongoing security challenges. Citizens report an opening of civic space, with greater freedom of expression and more public debate. Independent media organizations have returned to the country after being exiled by the former regime, and the transitional regime has generally permitted public protests. However, the top-down transitional process has excluded the participation of civil society organizations (CSOs), and restrictive laws on associations from the Assad era remain in force as a key obstacle for civic work.
The interim regime has seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent and dissenting media and organizations. With the fall of the Assad regime and its extreme persecution of journalists, independent media previously forced into exile, such as prominent outlet Ennab Baladi, have reopened offices in Damascus, and journalists previously forced to work anonymously have begun to report openly and publish criticism of the interim regime. Despite these new margins to operate freely, the interim regime has barred the press from accessing sensitive areas and reporting on politically sensitive topics, such as statements from former regime officials and the aftermath of massacres involving regime-affiliated militants in the coastal regions during March 2025.
While the interim regime has not taken systematic measures to shut down major, dissenting organizations, it did dissolve the Syrian Journalists Union and replace its leadership council with HTS loyalists. It has also maintained laws and institutions used by the Assad regime to censor and repress critics, such as the Ministry of Information and Law No. 93 of 1958 on associations that restrict the operations of CSOs and grant the executive authority to deny licenses, administer funding, and dissolve organizations. In 2025, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs announced that CSOs should continue to follow the Assad-era statute despite regime officials promising to repeal the law. As such, members of civil society report a continuation of the system of temporary licenses, lengthy registration procedures, and prior approval requirements for planned activities, albeit implemented informally and unevenly amid challenges to state capacity and the rule of law.
Amid challenges facing dissenters, the interim regime has permitted protests to take place without systematic retaliation against demonstrators. When demonstrations demanding safety, employment, and fair treatment swept through Latakia, Tartus, Homs, and Hama along the northwest coast in late 2025, observers described security forces as handling protests in a professional, measured manner focused on de-escalation, even as the efforts signalled coordinated organization among Alawites who formed a base of support for the former Assad regime. The interim regime response constitutes a meaningful change from the prior regime, which had detained or forcibly disappeared at least 140,000 people, many of whom were dissenters, from 2011 through the end of 2023. The response also indicates a meaningful change from the way that the HTS militant group retaliated against protesters throughout the conflict as it held control over Idlib province since 2017, where HTS faced repeated peaceful protests from civilians, activists, soldiers, and legal scholars between February 2023 and June 2024 demanding the removal of its commander, al-Sharaa, formerly known as Al-Jolani, and rejecting the policy of monopolizing decision-making and the domination of power. Protests were sparked by widespread torture allegations in 46 HTS-controlled detention facilities and the killing and disappearance of dissidents, which the group frequently accused of spying. In the summer of 2023, HTS arrested 300 individuals on charges of “espionage,” including HTS members who had been critical of the group’s repressive tactics.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. After years of violent conflict and decades of personalized authoritarian consolidation under the former Assad regime, institutions in Syria lack the capacity to check the regime or otherwise act independently from the transitional government. The 2025 Constitutional Declaration, issued unilaterally, grants al-Sharaa an indefinite term as Interim President with expansive executive powers. The unelected executive organizes indirect elections for the legislature and oversees the vetting of all candidates and voters for eligibility to participate, in addition to directly appointing more than one-third of its members. al-Sharaa also appoints all members to the Supreme Constitutional Court and the Supreme Judicial Council, which effectively monopolizes executive control over the central government.
In the aftermath of more than a decade of conflict, and 53 years of corruption and centralized decision-making and operational control under the Assads and a small circle of loyalists, institutions in Syria lack independence and operational effectiveness. While the interim government has taken over a hollowed-out state, measures taken during the first year of transition continue to subordinate all branches of government to the president and reduce the operational effectiveness of the state bureaucracy. In particular, the interim regime has systematically subjected executive institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. For example, the Military Operations Command appointed al-Sharaa president without a vote or public consultation. al-Sharaa then issued a Constitutional Declaration, which granted him powers to approve laws passed by the Interim People’s Assembly, authority to rule by decree, and the exclusive power to propose constitutional amendments. In 2025, the transitional regime laid off 300,000 public employees, disproportionately impacting affiliates of the former Baath party regime, and limiting the ability of the bureaucracy to function amid existing funding and infrastructure constraints. Meanwhile, the regime has appointed HTS members and affiliates of allied militant groups to key government positions, and al-Sharaa appointed two of his brothers to the positions of Secretary General to the President and head of the High Committee for Investment. Further, citizens throughout Syria have reported harassment and localized violence committed by regime officials and affiliates of the HTS militant group, with the fractured state and its new regime leaving them little recourse to seek accountability during the first year of transition.
The regime has systematically subjected legislative institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Upon taking power, al-Sharaa dissolved the People’s Assembly installed by the Assad regime through sham elections in 2021. Shortly after, the regime issued the Constitutional Declaration in March 2025, which called for the creation of an Interim People’s Assembly with 130 elected members and 70 members appointed by the interim president. The body has a mandate to pass laws, amend legislation, ratify treaties, approve the budget, and grant general amnesties for the transitional period, but it is bereft of any oversight authority and lacks the ability to impeach the president or members of the cabinet. Law No. 143 of 2025, issued by presidential decree, established indirect parameters for electing the Interim People’s Assembly through an executive-led process, effectively establishing direct regime control over the entire legislature through appointed members and approval of all candidates and voters. To further diminish the role of the legislature within the transitional government, al-Sharaa has the authority to approve all laws emanating from the Assembly, in addition to the ability to rule by decree without oversight or accountability mechanisms.
The regime has systematically subjected judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Per the 2025 Constitutional Declaration, al-Sharaa appoints all members of the Supreme Constitutional Court and the presidents of other courts and councils, such as the Supreme Judicial Council and the Court of Cassation. As of December 2025, most of the judicial officials appointed by al-Sharaa are HTS loyalists, many of whom do not have legal or judicial expertise, with only a single judge on the Supreme Judicial Council holding a law degree. The regime has also granted other key positions within the judicial system, such as the Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General, to former members of the HTS-led administration in Idlib who also do not hold legal expertise. In February 2025, the appointed Minister of Justice created a new position, Head of the Judicial Directorate, or Sheikh of the Judicial Directorate, as it is known colloquially, that does not have a basis in Syrian law or in the Constitutional Declaration, but rather mirrors the judicial administration practices of the HTS-led Salvation Government in Idlib. While the position does not have a specific mandate as it has been created without a legal framework, informally, the Sheikh holds more authority to make decisions than the attorney general or Supreme Council, and manages judicial staff by appointing and transferring judges who now require direct endorsement from the Judicial Directorate to work within the judiciary. The appointment of loyal HTS officials with little technical expertise to government positions has fostered informal judicial processes and an absence of the rule of law, preventing Syrian citizens from seeking accountability for both abuses committed in the past by parties to the conflict and ongoing human rights violations committed by officials and militants affiliated with the regime.
HRF classifies Syria as ruled by a fully authoritarian regime.
In December 2024, militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) toppled the Ba’athist regime, led by the Assad family that had ruled Syria since 1970. In January 2025, the Syrian General Command appointed Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former commander of HTS, also commonly known asAbu Mohammad al-Jolani, as interim president. In March 2025, al-Sharaa issued a unilateral Constitutional Declaration that established a presidential system with parameters for a five-year transitional government led by the executive. Amid continued waves of sectarian violence and extrajudicial killings involving both transitional government forces and remnants of the former regime, separatist pressures in the Northeast, the South, and coastal regions, and troubling signs of continued kleptocracy and opacity within key governance roles under the transitional government, many in Syrian civil society nonetheless maintain cautious optimism that rests on the possibility that the transition culminates in free and fair elections, the adoption of a genuinely pluralistic constitutional order, and a decisive end to internal violence—conditions without which regime change alone has not yet yielded a free, united, or democratic Syria.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in Syria, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. While the regime held limited elections for the Interim People’s Assembly in October 2025, only 6,000 Syrians were permitted to vote or run for office as members of the regime-vetted electoral college. To further limit the nature of the elections, the interim regime has continued the Assad-era ban on political parties and directly appointed 70 out of a total of 192 representatives in parliament.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. While the first year of transition has seen marked improvement from the repressive actions of the Assad regime, with greater margins of freedom for media, civil society, and protesters to operate, the interim regime continues to take measures to restrict or interfere with the freedoms of expression and association. The interim regime has blocked journalists from accessing politically sensitive areas and from reporting on topics sensitive to the regime. The executive also maintains Assad-era laws that grant it authority over the registration, funding, and administration of organizations to obstruct the work of independent organizations. The regime generally permits protests, but has at times arrested protesters and organizers under charges of espionage.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. While the interim regime has inherited state institutions that lack capacity due to financial, personnel, and infrastructural obstacles, it has also taken measures to subordinate all branches of government to the unelected president. Al-Sharaa maintains direct influence over the legislature, appointing more than one-third of its members and influencing the selection of candidates and voters of the electoral college. He also maintains the Assad-era authority to directly appoint members of the Supreme Constitutional Council and other higher courts, effectively monopolizing centralized control over the government and the course of Syria’s transition.
There is no democratic transition of power at any level of government in Syria, rendering moot assessment of electoral competition. As part of the five-year transitional process, the regime held limited elections for an Interim People’s Assembly in October 2025 in which an electoral college of just 6,000 Syrians was permitted to vote for 122 seats, while interim president al-Sharaa directly appointed a further 70 members. Per the interim Constitutional Declaration, interim MPs will serve a 30-month term with a mandate to pass and amend laws, ratify treaties, and approve the budget. Due to ongoing conflicts in different governorates, the regime withheld the remaining eight seats from three minority-majority regions that had not yet recognized the interim governing authority by the end of 2025.
Throughout the 2025 transitional election period, the regime systematically enjoyed significant and unfair campaign advantages. In the absence of electoral regulations and enforcement mechanisms, al-Sharaa appointed an 11-member Supreme Committee for People’s Assembly Elections, which in turn vetted and organized regional subcommittees in conjunction with the Department of Political Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The electoral subcommittees in each governorate established the electoral college, selecting the only Syrians allowed to stand for election as candidates or to cast a vote. Members of the former regime or security forces were not allowed to join an electoral college, and candidates were not allowed to run as members of established political parties, pushing campaigns to gain traction through informal local alliances that weakened coordinated political platforms and representational plurality vis-à-vis the central government. In addition to influence over the selection of candidates and voters, Decree No. 66 of 2025 grants al-Sharaa the power to directly appoint one-third of the Assembly. Interim regime officials claim that such measures were taken due to the difficulty of hosting elections in a country wrought by more than 15 years of conflict, mass emigration and displacement, and widespread institutional and infrastructure challenges, such as a lack of census data. However, critics argue that the interim electoral process and executive influence over the make up of the new People’s Assembly echo the sham elections and rubber-stamp parliament of the Assad regime, which, in the 2021 elections held in regime-controlled areas, barred opposition leaders from running with unjust legal barriers, and regularly manipulated election results through large-scale electoral fraud and voter suppression, ultimately claiming victory with an outsized 95% of votes. In other areas of control, armed opposition groups often installed public officials through sham civil processes while the groups stifled all forms of political opposition. Despite these worrying continuities, analysts have noted marked improvement in the top-down transitional process as compared to elections under Assad, whereby the Supreme Committee has taken measures to ensure transparency, consult local actors through public forums, and introduce procedures for submitting objections and appeals.
In addition to the aforementioned advantages, the regime configured representation in the interim parliament in such a way as to disenfranchise, or significantly overrepresent, particular groups of voters. Due to territorial and political disputes with the unelected transitional government under al-Sharaa, the Druze-majority governorate of Sweida, and Hassakeh and Raqqa governorates with significant Kurdish populations do not have representation in parliament as of December 2025. Further, Aleppo and Idlib, strongholds of the HTS-led interim government, received 42 seats to represent approximately 8 million people in the People’s Assembly, as compared to just 22 seats granted to approximately 7 million people living in the capital governorates of Damascus and Rural Damascus.
Independent media, political leaders, civil society leaders, organizations, and members of the general public are seriously and unfairly hindered in their ability to openly criticize or challenge the regime. The severe surveillance and repression of the Assad regime have somewhat improved since the HTS-led transitional regime took power at the end of 2024, allowing limited dissent and criticism. While total repression has eased, independent voices still face serious restrictions, particularly those in areas of the country with ongoing security challenges. Citizens report an opening of civic space, with greater freedom of expression and more public debate. Independent media organizations have returned to the country after being exiled by the former regime, and the transitional regime has generally permitted public protests. However, the top-down transitional process has excluded the participation of civil society organizations (CSOs), and restrictive laws on associations from the Assad era remain in force as a key obstacle for civic work.
The interim regime has seriously intimidated and obstructed the work of independent and dissenting media and organizations. With the fall of the Assad regime and its extreme persecution of journalists, independent media previously forced into exile, such as prominent outlet Ennab Baladi, have reopened offices in Damascus, and journalists previously forced to work anonymously have begun to report openly and publish criticism of the interim regime. Despite these new margins to operate freely, the interim regime has barred the press from accessing sensitive areas and reporting on politically sensitive topics, such as statements from former regime officials and the aftermath of massacres involving regime-affiliated militants in the coastal regions during March 2025.
While the interim regime has not taken systematic measures to shut down major, dissenting organizations, it did dissolve the Syrian Journalists Union and replace its leadership council with HTS loyalists. It has also maintained laws and institutions used by the Assad regime to censor and repress critics, such as the Ministry of Information and Law No. 93 of 1958 on associations that restrict the operations of CSOs and grant the executive authority to deny licenses, administer funding, and dissolve organizations. In 2025, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs announced that CSOs should continue to follow the Assad-era statute despite regime officials promising to repeal the law. As such, members of civil society report a continuation of the system of temporary licenses, lengthy registration procedures, and prior approval requirements for planned activities, albeit implemented informally and unevenly amid challenges to state capacity and the rule of law.
Amid challenges facing dissenters, the interim regime has permitted protests to take place without systematic retaliation against demonstrators. When demonstrations demanding safety, employment, and fair treatment swept through Latakia, Tartus, Homs, and Hama along the northwest coast in late 2025, observers described security forces as handling protests in a professional, measured manner focused on de-escalation, even as the efforts signalled coordinated organization among Alawites who formed a base of support for the former Assad regime. The interim regime response constitutes a meaningful change from the prior regime, which had detained or forcibly disappeared at least 140,000 people, many of whom were dissenters, from 2011 through the end of 2023. The response also indicates a meaningful change from the way that the HTS militant group retaliated against protesters throughout the conflict as it held control over Idlib province since 2017, where HTS faced repeated peaceful protests from civilians, activists, soldiers, and legal scholars between February 2023 and June 2024 demanding the removal of its commander, al-Sharaa, formerly known as Al-Jolani, and rejecting the policy of monopolizing decision-making and the domination of power. Protests were sparked by widespread torture allegations in 46 HTS-controlled detention facilities and the killing and disappearance of dissidents, which the group frequently accused of spying. In the summer of 2023, HTS arrested 300 individuals on charges of “espionage,” including HTS members who had been critical of the group’s repressive tactics.
Institutions largely fail to serve as independent checks on the regime. After years of violent conflict and decades of personalized authoritarian consolidation under the former Assad regime, institutions in Syria lack the capacity to check the regime or otherwise act independently from the transitional government. The 2025 Constitutional Declaration, issued unilaterally, grants al-Sharaa an indefinite term as Interim President with expansive executive powers. The unelected executive organizes indirect elections for the legislature and oversees the vetting of all candidates and voters for eligibility to participate, in addition to directly appointing more than one-third of its members. al-Sharaa also appoints all members to the Supreme Constitutional Court and the Supreme Judicial Council, which effectively monopolizes executive control over the central government.
In the aftermath of more than a decade of conflict, and 53 years of corruption and centralized decision-making and operational control under the Assads and a small circle of loyalists, institutions in Syria lack independence and operational effectiveness. While the interim government has taken over a hollowed-out state, measures taken during the first year of transition continue to subordinate all branches of government to the president and reduce the operational effectiveness of the state bureaucracy. In particular, the interim regime has systematically subjected executive institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. For example, the Military Operations Command appointed al-Sharaa president without a vote or public consultation. al-Sharaa then issued a Constitutional Declaration, which granted him powers to approve laws passed by the Interim People’s Assembly, authority to rule by decree, and the exclusive power to propose constitutional amendments. In 2025, the transitional regime laid off 300,000 public employees, disproportionately impacting affiliates of the former Baath party regime, and limiting the ability of the bureaucracy to function amid existing funding and infrastructure constraints. Meanwhile, the regime has appointed HTS members and affiliates of allied militant groups to key government positions, and al-Sharaa appointed two of his brothers to the positions of Secretary General to the President and head of the High Committee for Investment. Further, citizens throughout Syria have reported harassment and localized violence committed by regime officials and affiliates of the HTS militant group, with the fractured state and its new regime leaving them little recourse to seek accountability during the first year of transition.
The regime has systematically subjected legislative institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Upon taking power, al-Sharaa dissolved the People’s Assembly installed by the Assad regime through sham elections in 2021. Shortly after, the regime issued the Constitutional Declaration in March 2025, which called for the creation of an Interim People’s Assembly with 130 elected members and 70 members appointed by the interim president. The body has a mandate to pass laws, amend legislation, ratify treaties, approve the budget, and grant general amnesties for the transitional period, but it is bereft of any oversight authority and lacks the ability to impeach the president or members of the cabinet. Law No. 143 of 2025, issued by presidential decree, established indirect parameters for electing the Interim People’s Assembly through an executive-led process, effectively establishing direct regime control over the entire legislature through appointed members and approval of all candidates and voters. To further diminish the role of the legislature within the transitional government, al-Sharaa has the authority to approve all laws emanating from the Assembly, in addition to the ability to rule by decree without oversight or accountability mechanisms.
The regime has systematically subjected judicial institutions to reforms that abolish or seriously weaken their independence or operational effectiveness. Per the 2025 Constitutional Declaration, al-Sharaa appoints all members of the Supreme Constitutional Court and the presidents of other courts and councils, such as the Supreme Judicial Council and the Court of Cassation. As of December 2025, most of the judicial officials appointed by al-Sharaa are HTS loyalists, many of whom do not have legal or judicial expertise, with only a single judge on the Supreme Judicial Council holding a law degree. The regime has also granted other key positions within the judicial system, such as the Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General, to former members of the HTS-led administration in Idlib who also do not hold legal expertise. In February 2025, the appointed Minister of Justice created a new position, Head of the Judicial Directorate, or Sheikh of the Judicial Directorate, as it is known colloquially, that does not have a basis in Syrian law or in the Constitutional Declaration, but rather mirrors the judicial administration practices of the HTS-led Salvation Government in Idlib. While the position does not have a specific mandate as it has been created without a legal framework, informally, the Sheikh holds more authority to make decisions than the attorney general or Supreme Council, and manages judicial staff by appointing and transferring judges who now require direct endorsement from the Judicial Directorate to work within the judiciary. The appointment of loyal HTS officials with little technical expertise to government positions has fostered informal judicial processes and an absence of the rule of law, preventing Syrian citizens from seeking accountability for both abuses committed in the past by parties to the conflict and ongoing human rights violations committed by officials and militants affiliated with the regime.
