• Cultural, artistic and media spaces are reopening as writers, artists and journalists return after decades of repression
• Social media in Syria has shifted from surveillance to open dialogue, with officials engaging with citizens and responding to criticism

ISTANBUL

“If you sell one official’s car for a hundred thousand dollars … you could pay our salaries.”

With those sharp words, a teacher in Idlib stood up during a meeting with the local Education Directorate and confronted officials directly – a moment that spread rapidly across Syrian social media as teachers protested low wages.

For Syrians, the frustration needed little explanation. A barrel of heating oil now costs around $110 and a liter of petrol $50, while teachers make between $120 and $150 a month.

But the scene was not just a teacher complaining about high prices. It captured a symbolic shift in a country taking its first steps into public life after the fall of Bashar al-Assad – a year in which Syrians are learning to speak, organize, and criticize with an openness that once seemed impossible.

Under Assad, public protests were met with lethal force, as seen in the brutal crackdown on the 2011 uprising that sparked the civil war. Dissenters risked jail or worse, security forces monitored gatherings and peaceful assemblies could lead to mass arrests.

That contrast was visible again on Nov. 25, 2025, when Tartous and Latakia in western Syria witnessed demonstrations and sit-ins by members of the Alawite community calling for “decentralization” and the release of detainees.

In a sight unthinkable under the former regime, internal security forces surrounded the protest – not to disperse it, but to protect demonstrators, according to Syrian media reports.

For the first time in decades, many Syrians say they have finally begun to “breathe freedom” after years of enforced silence.

Arts and cultural life reawakening

The wave of freedom has also reached Syria’s cultural and artistic spheres, where suppressed voices are reemerging after decades of restrictions.

Abir Nahhas, a Syrian novelist and head of the Homs branch of the Arab Writers’ Union in Syria, told Anadolu that literature has always held up a mirror to a nation’s identity.

She said writers can now speak clearly about justice, amnesty and accountability, insisting that literature must provide “genuine literary observation” of what happened during the Syrian uprising – tracing the roots of conflict and portraying a recovering society through balanced characters.

According to Nahhas, Syria’s cultural circles “buzz with events” today – a revival she sees as a chance to “reorder the Syrian cultural house.”

She recalls being invited to a cultural festival at Damascus’s national library – formerly al-Assad Library – as both a strange and joyful experience, marking a return to spaces once denied to cultural figures under the Baath regime.

Visual artist Rama al-Dakkak expressed a similar sense of transformation.

After years of painting pale, fearful figures, she told Anadolu that her recent work depicts people smiling – a testament to the fragile hope emerging amid despair after the regime’s fall.

Dakkak said she follows her artistic instinct, allowing all inner voices to speak. Depicting loss and exile took years, but portraying the future remains equally weighty, she said, believing that art helps shape identity through its power to spark dialogue.

Social media moves from surveillance to dialogue

Under Assad, social media was a minefield. Posts critical of the regime could trigger interrogation, harassment or imprisonment, and online spaces were tightly monitored and often weaponized for propaganda.

But today, Syrians are engaging on them in real time – often with humor and bluntness – and getting responses that hint at a fundamentally changed political climate.

Communications Minister Abdul Salam Heikal became the subject of a viral joke when a user posted his photo and wrote: “Your bald head looks like a rabbi’s cap ... Get a hair transplant, we don’t need them saying we have a Zionist minister.”

Heikal replied: “Don’t think badly of me, my brother ... This is a satellite internet receiver dish.”

Similarly, Mohammed Nidal al-Shaar, the minister of economy and industry, responded to a Facebook follower who labeled him a “failure” with a humble plea: “Help me to succeed.”

Drama and media landscape redrawn

The fall of the regime also ended decades of repression of the press and the drama industry, with independent and opposition outlets returning to operate inside Syria.

Enab Baladi, a nonprofit outlet founded in 2011, opened an office in Damascus in January 2025 – its first-ever inside the country.

At the same time, the private Syria TV began broadcasting its first news bulletins in November from the heart of Damascus, after years of operating in exile.

According to Information Minister Hamza Mustafa, Syria has succeeded in attracting more than 25 television series for production in the country, a figure higher than in 2010.

“Our goal is to make Syria a headquarters for the media industry,” he told Anadolu.

He said the plan is to shift emphasis “from the national level to the local level,” noting that each province has communities with their own identities, so the goal is to produce media reflecting those local specificities.

Mustafa said more than 500 media outlets are now operating in Syria, and the ministry has received thousands of applications for press cards.

Human rights and civil organizations have also reclaimed their public roles.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), founded secretly in 2011 to document abuses, announced in June 2025 that it had begun official operations from Damascus after receiving a legal license and opening its first office since the fall of the regime.