page_title: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
section_title: Public opinion
hierarchical_section_title: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham / Ideology and governance / Public opinion
caption_attribution_description: English: Students of the Free Aleppo University in al-Dana protest against the closure of several faculties by the Syrian Salvation Government.
context_page_description: Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, commonly referred to as Tahrir al-Sham, is an active Sunni Islamist militant group involved in the Syrian Civil War. It was formed on 28 January 2017 as a merger between Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the Ansar al-Din Front, Jaysh al-Sunna, Liwa al-Haqq, and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement. After the announcement, additional groups and individuals joined. The merged group is currently led by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and former Ahrar al-Sham leaders, although the High Command consists of leaders from other groups. Many groups and individuals defected from Ahrar al-Sham, representing their more conservative and Salafist elements. The Ansar al-Din Front and Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement have since split off from Tahrir al-Sham. It had an estimated 20,000 members in 2019.
  Despite the merger, Tahrir al-Sham has been accused of working as al-Qaeda's Syrian branch on a covert level and is considered one of its branches, and that many of the group's senior figures, particularly Abu Jaber, held similarly extreme views.
context_section_description: The ECHO Research Centre at Laurentian University conducted an opinion poll on 4,858 residents in several areas of Syria between 10 July 2017 and 28 July 2017. According to the poll's results, 77% of those surveyed disagreed with the Salafist ideology Tahrir al-Sham and other Salafist groups promote in Idlib, 73% rejected HTS-affiliated local councils in Idlib, 66% agreed that HTS is part of al-Qaeda in Syria, and 63% claimed that the dominance of HTS in Idlib will lead to a "second Tora Bora". Of those who participated in the poll, nearly all of them (close to 100%) considered HTS to be contrary to the goals of the Syrian opposition, although they were split in its extent. 51% of them considered HTS to be contrary to the opposition since its inception, 42% considered HTS to be previously consistent with the opposition, but is no longer so, and 7% considered HTS to be a counter-revolutionary organization.
caption: Students of the Free Aleppo University in al-Dana protest against the closure of several faculties by the Syrian Salvation Government which is affiliated with Tahrir al-Sham.
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