Burhan Ghalioun
برهان غليون
Also known as: Borhan Ghalioun • Burhan Ghalioun SNC • Burhan Ghalioun • Burhan Ghalyoun
Journeys
Burhan Ghalioun: The Professor Who Led Syria's First Opposition
From his office at the Sorbonne to the world stage as head of the Syrian National Council, Ghalioun embodied the intellectual opposition's rise and fall.
Burhan Ghalioun: The Sorbonne Professor Who Led the Opposition
Burhan Ghalioun's leadership of the Syrian National Council represented the aspirations of the secular, liberal opposition — and its limitations in unifying a fractured exile political community.
Biography
Burhan Ghalioun is a Syrian sociologist and professor of political sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris, and director of the Centre d'Etudes sur l'Orient Contemporain (CEOC). Born in Homs in 1945, he has lived in political exile in France for decades and published a landmark 'Manifesto for Democracy' in the late 1970s. He was elected the founding head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) in August 2011 — the main umbrella opposition body — and became the face of the Syrian opposition in international media. He resigned on May 17, 2012, accused of being too close to the Muslim Brotherhood and failing to build a unified opposition.