Syria’s enigmatic al-Sharaa

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 10 February 2026 

Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has become something of a puzzle. His words increasingly appear at odds with his actions.

For example​, he repeatedly emphasizes that his overriding aim is to unify the nation while recognizing the basic rights of its minorities. Yet here he is in deadly conflict with both the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the administrative body of Rojava, the Kurds’ semi-autonomous region in the north-east.

Sharaa probably regards the offensive as consistent with his unification agenda: he is seeking to bring Kurdish-controlled areas fully under state authority.  But since the campaign marginalizes Kurdish political representation, undermines local self-administration, and results in collective harm to Kurdish civilians, it breaches his commitment to protecting minority rights.

In December 2024, with a militant Sunni Islamist career behind him, Sharaa emerged at the head of a professional fighting force to overthrow the dictatorship of Shia-aligned Bashar al-Assad.  Since then he has consistently declared that his aim is to ​construct a ​Syria that unites its disparate elements into a unified​ democratic state.  He has been just as clear in insisting that the future Syria will be rooted in Sunni‑Islamic moral and legal principles. He clearly does not believe his twin aspirations are mutually incompatible​, though they may be. Where is an Islamic state that is truly democratic?  

He may be looking as a model toward Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, which retains a few democratic elements in its constitution.

​In fact it is Erdogan who is eyeing Syria as a future sphere of influence – and ​Turkey already has a foot firmly planted there.  Large areas of Syrian territory ​adjacent to the Turkish border have been under de facto Turkish military occupation and administration since 2016.

The Kurds have long been a domestic political nightmare for Erdogan with their constant demands for autonomy, and he has been engaged for years in ensuring that his Turkish Kurds get no military support from their Syrian co-ethnics lodged in their autonomous administration just across the border.

Current analysis suggests Erdogan is seeking to consolidate and, where possible, expand the partial security zones he has seized inside Syria along  the Syrian-Turkish border. Turkish officials consistently proclaim their goal to be a 30‑km wide buffer zone. 

In August 2025, Syria and Turkey signed a military cooperation agreement.  The text presents Turkish involvement as supporting, not dismembering, Syria.  By early 2026, official statements emanating from Ankara were increasingly framing Turkey’s entrenched military presence in northern Syria as part of a cooperative security and state‑building process during Syria’s transition from the Assad regime.

There has as yet been no ultimatum, demand or even request from Sharaa that Turkey evacuate the northern zones it occupies.  It is however implicit, in Sharaa’s long‑term aim of recovering full sovereignty, that once security threats are removed, foreign forces, including Turkey’s, should ultimately leave.  Erdogan may have different ideas.

Given Sharaa’s jihadist past, many of his statements as he took control of Syria surprised world opinion.  From the start he repeatedly emphasized unity, reconstruction, transitional governance and “a new era” for Syria, including democratic elections and a truly representative parliament.

In his first televised address as interim president on January 30, 2025 he said: “We will work on an inclusive transitional government that reflects Syria’s diversity.”  This government, he added, would “build institutions and run the country until it can hold free and fair elections.”

He went on to announce that he would shortly form a committee to prepare for a national dialogue conference, described as “a platform for Syrians to discuss the future political program of the nation.”  The committee was indeed set up by presidential decree early in February 2025, and has been at work ever since.  Some commentators criticize it for being dominated by Islamists close to Sharaa, and as excluding key Kurdish, Alawite and Druze figures.

Druze exclusion from the constitutional committee reflects Sharaa’s ambiguous relationship with this minority community.  As with the Kurds, while his words emphasize his intention to include them within the fabric of a unified Syria, what he does appears to negate what he says. 

For example, government forces were certainly involved in the armed attacks on the Druze community over the four months April-to-July 2025.  The immediate triggers were a combination of long‑standing grievances between Druze communities and the new Syrian authorities over perceived discrimination and security control, and local provocations by Bedouins.

In July, Sweida – a city where Druze form about 90% of the population – became the site of intense conflict. 

          Syrian government forces were deployed to suppress the violence, but multiple independent reports document government troops and allied fighters looting and burning homes and shops, humiliating Druze clerics and residents, and in some cases executing civilians hiding in their houses.  Human rights groups put the death toll at over a thousand, mostly Druze civilians.

Before the mid-July ceasefire between Syrian government representatives and Druze leaders, Sharaa declared in a televised address: “Protecting our Druze community is a top priority… We will do everything in our power to protect the lives and dignity of every Druze citizen.”

After the ceasefire, in the course of a speech on TV he said: “Sweida remains an integral part of the Syrian state, and the Druze constitute a fundamental pillar of the Syrian national fabric”, adding a vow “to protect all minorities in Syria.”

Israel, of course, intervened militarily and politically in July 2025, first striking Syrian army positions around Sweida, and then key military sites in Damascus.  Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other ministers told both the Syrian Druze community and Israel’s own Druze citizens that the IDF was “acting to protect our Druze brothers.”

The Syrian leadership rejects any Israeli claim to a protective role over Syrian Druze, portraying it as cover for reinforcing a demilitarized belt along the Golan to Israel’s advantage.  Sharaa insists that reasserting central control is integral to his policy of unifying the nation.

Will he eventually bring his disparate minority interests, such as the Kurds and the Druze, within the overall control of a unified national government that represents a democratic, albeit Islamic, state?  That is the conundrum he currently represents.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled: "Syria's future: "Can Ahmed al-Sharaa reconcile democracy, Islam and minority rights?", 10 February 2026:
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-886054