The prime minister of Syria (Arabic: رئيس وزراء سوريا, romanized: Raʾīs wuzarāʾ Sūriyā), officially the president of the Council of Ministers of the Syrian Arab Republic, was the head of government of Syria from 1920 to 2025. After the fall of the Assad regime, the prime minister of Syria was the head of the Syrian caretaker government.
Subhi Bey Barakat al-Khalidi (Arabic: صبحي بك بركات الخالدي; Turkish: Suphi Bereket; 1889–1939) was a Turkish-born Syrian politician who served as the first president of Syria from 1922 until his resignation in 1925. He served during the French Mandate where the French controlled the country. He also served as the fourth prime minister during his tenure as president.
Part of the reason the French supported his candidacy as president of the Syrian Federation was because as neither a native of Damascus nor a very strong Arabic speaker (Turkish was his mother tongue), he did not seem to pose a nationalist threat to French rule.
The Syrian transitional government is the provisional government of Syria, formed on 29 March 2025 under President Ahmed al-Sharaa. It succeeded the Syrian caretaker government headed by Mohammed al-Bashir.
The government was announced by Ahmed al-Sharaa at a ceremony at the Presidential Palace in Damascus, where the new ministers were sworn in and delivered speeches outlining their agendas. Two new ministries were formed: the Ministry of Sports and Youth and Ministry of Emergency and Disaster Management. The position of Prime Minister was abolished. The Ministry of Energy was formed from the mergers of the Ministry of Electricity, the Ministry of Oil and Mineral Resources and the Ministry of Water Resources while the Ministry of Economy and Industry was formed from the mergers of the Ministry of Economy and Foreign Trade, Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection and the Ministry of Industry.
Hafez al-Assad (6 October 1930 – 10 June 2000) was a Syrian politician and military officer who served as the president of Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000. He was previously the prime minister from 1970 to 1971 as well as the regional secretary of the regional command of the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and secretary general of the National Command of the Ba'ath Party from 1970 to 2000. Assad was a key participant in the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, which brought the Syrian regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party to power in the country, a power that lasted until the fall of the regime in 2024, then led by his son Bashar.
After the 1963 coup, the new leadership appointed Assad as the commander of the Syrian Air Force. In February 1966 Assad participated in a second coup, which toppled the traditional leaders of the Ba'ath Party. Assad was appointed defence minister by the new government. Four years later Assad initiated a third coup, which ousted Marxist regime of Salah Jadid, and appointed himself as leader of Syria. Assad imposed various changes to the Ba'athist foreign policy after seizing power, such as abandoning Salah Jadid's policy of exporting "socialist revolution" and strengthening Syria's foreign relations with countries that his predecessor had deemed "reactionary". Assad made an alliance with the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War in return for support against Israel, while keeping ties with many Western European & Gulf Arabian countries. While he officially kept the pan-Arab concept of unifying the Arab world into one “Arab nation” as he termed it, such as being part of the Federation of Arab Republics, he sought to paint Syria as the defender of the Palestinians against Israel.
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) (Arabic: المكتب المركزي للإحصاء) is the statistical agency responsible for the gathering of "information relating to economic, social and general activities and conditions" in the Syrian Arab Republic. The office is answerable to the office of the Prime Minister and has its main offices in Damascus. The CBS was established in 2005 and is administered by an administrative council headed by the deputy prime minister for economic affairs.
After the Syrian government began reconstructing infrastructure in 2011, the bureau began releasing data from 2011 to 2018.
Salah al-Din al-Bitar (Arabic: صلاح الدين البيطار, romanized: Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn al-Bīṭār; 1 January 1912 – 21 July 1980) was a Syrian politician who co-founded the Baʿath Party with Michel Aflaq in the early 1940s. As students in Paris in the early 1930s, the two formulated a doctrine that combined aspects of nationalism and socialism. Bitar later served as prime minister in several early Ba'athist governments in Syria but became alienated from the party as it grew more radical. In 1966 he fled the country, lived mostly in Europe and remained politically active until he was assassinated in Paris in 1980 by unidentified hitmen linked to the regime of Hafez al-Assad.
The Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (Arabic: القيادة المركزية لحزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي), which was established through the merger of the National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and the Regional Command of the Syrian Regional Branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in 2018, was the ruling organ of the Ba'ath Party organization in Syria and the Syrian-led Ba'athist movement. Its predecessor, the Regional Command, stems from Ba'athist ideology, where region literally means an Arab state. Until 2012, according to the 1973 Constitution of Syria, the Central Command had the power to nominate a candidate for President. While the constitution does not state that the Secretary-General of the Central Command is the President of Syria, the charter of the National Progressive Front (NPF), of which the Ba'ath Party is a member, states that the President and the Secretary-General is the NPF President, but this is not stated in any legal document.
The 1st Extraordinary Regional Congress held in 1964 decided that the Secretary-General of the Central Command would also be head of state. Amin al-Hafiz, the incumbent secretary, became head of state and retained his post as Prime Minister. At the 2nd Regional Congress in 1965, the Military Committee weakened the powers of the National Command by passing a resolution that the Regional Secretary of the Regional Command was ex officio head of state. The secretariat was given the powers to appoint the Prime Minister, the cabinet, the commander-in-chief and the leading military commanders.
"Al-Damad" Ahmad Nami or "Damat" Ahmet Nami (Arabic: أحمد نامي, romanized: Aḥmad Nāmī; 1873 – 13 December 1962) was an Ottoman prince (damat), the prime minister of Syria and president of Syria (1926–28), and a lecturer of history and politics.
His first language was Turkish and could hardly speak Arabic.