People walk along a market alley in the old city of Damascus, Syria, on Jan. 18, 2025. (Credit: Omar Haj Kadour/AFP)
As Syria spends the next three years drafting a new constitution, the stakes could not be higher for the country’s minority populations. While 75 percent of Syria’s 23 million citizens are Sunni Muslims, the remainder are a mix of Alawites, Kurds, Druze, Christians, and others, many of whom have long endured persecution and violence. For these communities, the Constitution is more than a document; it’s a lifeline.
Recognizing the gravity of the moment, representatives are already taking steps to secure their protection, making diplomatic visits to Washington, meeting with the leading group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and releasing statements on the impending constitutional process. They see a chance to codify the principles of inclusivity, justice, and representation essential for their long-term safety.
A central question looms over these efforts: should Syria’s new constitution explicitly recognize and protect specific minority groups or should it assert the equality of all citizens under a unified national framework? Though the latter reflects the liberal democratic ideals of Western constitutions, Syria’s fractured ethnic and religious landscape demands stronger, community-specific guarantees. Such protections are crucial to address issues like language rights, education access, and local autonomy — challenges that Syria’s history of ethnic divisions has repeatedly laid bare and that will not disappear with the stroke of a pen.
Explicit recognition of group identities is not a new or foreign idea in Syria. Syria’s pre-Assad constitutions consistently acknowledged the communal identities that continue to shape the country today.
The first Ottoman Constitution of 1876 focused on the rights of specific community groups within the Empire. Article 11 guaranteed religious freedom for recognized religious communities without extending this freedom to individual conscience or belief, while Article 16 safeguarded the right of religious communities to maintain their own schools.
The 1920 draft constitution, though never ratified, was similarly a communal pact, recognizing rights by religious groups. The draft proposed decentralization and specified the need for equality “between different religious communities.” Article 14 granted religious courts and sectarian councils the authority to adjudicate personal status issues according to each community's laws. Article 67 introduced a quota system, guaranteeing political representation for all groups by allocating a portion of Senate seats to minority groups from each province.
As Syria approaches the drafting of a new constitution, guaranteeing rights for Syria’s minority groups will require answers to difficult constitutional questions. How should internal boundaries be drawn to ensure fair representation for minority groups? Should powers be decentralized to give minorities greater control over culturally sensitive issues like education, immigration, and communication? Should political offices and resources be distributed by ethnic affiliation? What languages should be officially recognized? Should ethnic or national groups have access to publicly funded education in their native languages?
Western liberal constitutions try to answer these questions by focusing on individual rights. Rather than singling out minority groups for special protections, they aim to protect everyone through broad civil and political rights. Since rights such as freedom of speech and religion naturally operate within communities, special protections for minority groups are viewed as unnecessary.
The issue is not that individual rights offer the wrong answers to these questions — it’s that they offer no answers at all. The right to hold office provides no guidance on whether there should be quotas by ethnicity for political office. The right to free speech provides no clarity on language policy. The right to public education is silent on whether that education should be in one’s native tongue. When these issues are put off until after the constitution is written and left for the legislature to decide, cultural minorities become vulnerable to injustice at the hands of the majority.
The shortcomings of liberal constitutional frameworks are compounded by Syria’s particular history under Assad, a past that has fostered skepticism of ideologies promising stable governance in exchange for abandoning communal identities. Baathism aimed to dissolve ethnic identities into a singular Syrian nation, but ultimately only served the interests of the Assad family. The failure of Baathism will have left Syrians even more resistant to the equally idealistic promises of Western liberalism, which also calls for the erasure of communal identities, justified instead in terms of individualism and personal liberty.
Supporters of individual rights often fear that officially recognizing minority groups would deepen ethnic and sectarian divisions. For them, enshrining special rights for minority groups treats ethnicity as innate rather than malleable. In their view, political integration and the creation of a common citizenship allow ethnic lines to shift over time.
The reality, though, is that ethnic, sectarian, and linguistic identities tend to be remarkably resilient once established. Syria’s past constitutions demonstrate that it has consistently grappled with the challenges of governing its diverse population. The resilience of ethno-sectarian identities doesn’t mean they are primordial or unchangeable, nor does it imply they inherently lead to violent conflict. It does suggest, however, that ignoring or suppressing them may only amplify their salience.
Constitutional negotiations in Syria today should embrace creative approaches that reflect the country’s unique historical and social realities. While Western liberal constitutional models have been effective in certain societies, the recent crises of political legitimacy in well-established democracies show that these models are not without their flaws. And these models have proven especially inadequate for diverse, post-conflict countries like Syria, where the failures of Ba’athism highlights the need for a constitution that does more than offer abstract guarantees of individual rights.
Syria should instead codify protections for Syria’s diverse communities, ensuring that minority rights are not left to the whims of majoritarian politics. By looking to its own constitutions prior to Assad, Syria can build a framework rooted in its history of acknowledging and safeguarding communal identities.
Haddon Barth is studying history with a focus on international relations and the Middle East at Princeton University. His current research examines the liberal discourses surrounding the 1919 Syrian-Arab Congress and the 1920 Syrian draft constitution.
