President of Syria Bashar al-Assad could imagine Syria without a member of the Assad family in executive power as the country belonged to all Syrians, SANA reported.

“Of course, we don’t own the country, my family doesn’t own the country, to say that only Assad should be in that position, that’s self-evident, and this could be by coincidence, because President Assad didn’t have an heir in the institution to be his successor,” he noted.

Bashar al-Assad was born in Damascus on 11 September 1965, the son of Aniseh and Hafez al-Assad. His father born to a poor family of Alawite background, rose through the Party ranks to take control of the Syrian-led branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party in the 1970 Corrective Revolution, culminating in his rise to the Syrian presidency.

When his father died in 2000, Bashar was appointed leader of the Ba'ath Party and the Army, and was elected president unopposed in what the government claimed to be a massive popular support, after the Parliament swiftly voted to lower the minimum age for candidates from 40 to 34 (Assad's age when he was elected). On 27 May 2007, Bashar was approved as president for another seven-year term.

In December 2000, Assad married Asma Assad, a British citizen of Syrian origin. They have 2 sons and a daughter.