Assad family in the context of "Al-Nusra Front"

Ba'athist Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR), was the Syrian state between 1963 and 2024 under the one-party rule of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. From 1971 until its collapse in 2024, it was ruled by the Assad family, and was therefore commonly referred to as Assadist Syria or the Assad regime.

The regime emerged in 1963 as a result of a coup d'état led by Alawite Ba'athist military officers. Another coup in 1966 led to Salah Jadid becoming the country's de facto leader while Nureddin al-Atassi assumed the presidency. In 1970, Jadid and al-Atassi were overthrown by Hafez al-Assad in the Corrective Revolution. The next year, Assad became president after winning sham elections.

The history of Syria covers events which occurred on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic and in the region of Syria. The territory of the Syrian Arab Republic was occupied and ruled by several empires, including the Sumerians, Mitanni, Assyrians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hittites, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Arameans, Amorites, Persians, Greeks and Romans. Syria is considered to have emerged as an independent country for the first time on 24 October 1945, upon the signing of the United Nations Charter by the Syrian government, effectively ending France's mandate by the League of Nations to "render administrative advice and assistance to the population" of Syria, which came in effect in April 1946.

On 21 February 1958, Syria merged with Egypt to create the United Arab Republic after plebiscitary ratification of the merger by voters in both countries, but seceded from it in 1961, thereby recovering its full independence. From 1963 until 2024, the Syrian Arab Republic was ruled by the Ba’ath Party, with the Assad family exclusively in power since 1971. Following the fall of the Assad regime, Syria entered a political transition under the transitional government on 29 March 2025.

Nasserism (Arabic: التَّيَّار النَّاصِرِيّ, romanized: at-Tayyār an-Nāṣiriyy) is an Arab nationalist and Arab socialist political ideology based on the thinking of Gamal Abdel Nasser, one of the two principal leaders of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, and Egypt's second president. Spanning the domestic and international spheres, it combines elements of Arab socialism, republicanism, secularism, nationalism, anti-imperialism, developing world solidarity, Pan-Arabism, and international non-alignment. According to Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, Nasserism symbolised "the direction of liberation, socialist transformation, the people’s control of their own resources, and the democracy of the peoples working forces."

Many other Arab countries have adopted Nasserist forms of government during the 20th century, most being formed during the 1960s, including Algeria under the FLN and the Libyan Arab Republic under Muammar Gaddafi. The Nasserist ideology is also similar in theory to the Ba'athist ideology which was also notably practiced under Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist Iraq (1968–2003) and under the Assad family's Ba'athist Syria (1963–2024).

Presidential elections were held in Syria on 12 March 1971. There was only one candidate, Hafez al-Assad, with voters asked to approve or reject his candidacy. A reported 99% of voters voted in favour, with a turnout of 95%.

These were the first elections to ever take place in Ba'athist Syria, which was established in 1963 following the 1963 coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power. The elections marked the beginning of the Assad dynasty, who seized power in November 1970; the Ba'ath Party and Assad family would rule Syria for the next six decades until the regime was overthrown by anti-Assad rebels in 2024.

On 8 December 2024, the Assad regime collapsed during a major offensive by opposition forces. The offensive was spearheaded by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and the Southern Operations Room (SOR), and supported mainly by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army as part of the Syrian civil war that began with the Syrian revolution in 2011. The capture of Syria's capital, Damascus, marked the end of the Assad family's rule, which had governed Syria as a hereditary totalitarian dictatorship since Hafez al-Assad assumed power in 1971 after a successful coup d'état.

As the SOR advanced towards Damascus, reports emerged that Bashar al-Assad had fled the capital aboard a plane to Russia, where he joined his family, already in exile, and was granted asylum. Following his departure, opposition forces declared victory on state television. Concurrently, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed Assad's resignation and departure from Syria.

The Syrian revolution was a series of mass protests and civilian uprisings throughout Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Ba'athist regime – lasting from 2011 to 2024 as part of the greater Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long Assad family rule, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into large nationwide protests in March. The uprising was marked by mass protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad meeting police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded. 13 years after the start of the revolution, the Assad regime fell in 2024 after a series of rebel offensives.

Despite al-Assad's attempts to crush the protests with crackdowns, censorship and concessions, the mass protests had become a full-blown revolution by the end of April. The Ba'athist government deployed its ground troops and airforce, ordering them to fight the rebels. The regime's deployment of large-scale violence against protestors and civilians led to international condemnation of the Assad government and support for the protestors. Discontent among soldiers led to massive defections from the Syrian Arab Army, while people began to form opposition militias across the country, gradually transforming the revolution from a civil uprising to an armed rebellion, and later a full-scale civil war. The Free Syrian Army was formed on 29 July 2011, marking the beginning of an armed insurgency.

The mass media in Ba'athist Syria consisted primarily of television, radio, Internet, film and print. The national language of Ba'athist Syria was Arabic but some publications and broadcasts were also disseminated in English and French. While television was the most popular medium in Ba'athist Syria, the Internet became a widely utilized vehicle to disseminate content by 2013. In addition to its control of domestic media, the Ba'athist state also sought to control what Syrians saw by restricting coverage from outside sources. Publications and broadcasts were monitored by members of the government. All mass media outlets were under the supervision of the Ministry of Information. Third article of the 2013 Information Ministry guidelines stipulated that the purpose of all media outlets was "to enlighten public opinion" in line with the ideological doctrines "of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party and the policy of the state".

Following Ba'ath party's capture of power in 1963, the state immediately banned all news outlets except which advanced party propaganda. Syrians have had no exposure to free media or independent press since then, with there being no space for independent journalism, newspapers, publications, journalists or websites un-affiliated with party organizations. The situation worsened further after 1970, with the Ba'athist dictatorship imposing additional censorship policies that furthered its totalitarian control of the society until the Syrian Revolution erupts across Syria which began on 15 March 2011 until the dictator Bashar al-Assad and his family are overthrown on 8 December 2024 with the Fall of Damascus to the government rebels which led the Assad family left Syria at midnight for Russia which landed in Moscow for a political asylum as refuge. State propaganda machine was primarily used to monopolise information access and indoctrinate the Syrian population in Ba'athist ideology.