The Influencer Chef Dividing Syria’s Diaspora (2024)

ISTANBUL—In March, days before the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a line stretched for a block in Aksaray, a neighborhood that has been dubbed “Little Syria” for its large immigrant community. Hungry customers not-so-patiently waited to eat at a recently opened restaurant called Chef Omar’s, which has been hailed as the city’s best shawarma spot. The eponymously named eatery is the latest venture of Damascus-born social media chef Omar Abu Lebda, who has exploded in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic.

But despite the buzz—and great reviews—some Syrians vow never to eat at Chef Omar’s. The cook is embroiled in a series of controversies. His critics claim that he is out of touch with Syria’s protracted humanitarian crisis and allege that he’s friendly with the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad.

Though Assad remains an international pariah, stifled by sanctions, his government last year normalized relations with several Arab states, which see his rule as an unfortunate reality. In an attempt to rebrand and attract economic investment, the Syrian government has been accused of recruiting celebrities, YouTubers, and travel vloggers to “whitewash” war crimes and prove that the country is back on its feet.

Chef Omar’s opponents claim to have evidence of his pro-government proclivities, but he has denied links to the Assad regime. Irrespective of where the truth lies, his meteoric rise is evidence that even food—so revered in Syrian culture—is no longer immune to the deep political divisions that have permeated through the country and its diaspora since the onset of the civil war 13 years ago.

Chef Omar first fled Syria to escape the war in 2012, when he moved to Sudan. The country was an unexpected safe haven that Syrians could travel to and work in visa-free. In 2014, he arrived by plane in Istanbul, where he trained as a cook at a local culinary academy. In 2020, during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, he quickly racked up millions of loyal followers on social media, convening Syrians displaced by war and isolated by lockdown to discuss recipes and cook together remotely. Today, he boasts 7.4 million followers on Facebook and 3.5 million on YouTube.

In many of his videos, Chef Omar resembles a character from Bab Al-Hara, a Syrian soap opera first released in 2006 that depicts life in Damascus in the 1930s, not long after Syria shifted from Ottoman to French colonial rule. The show is among the most popular ever released in the Arabic-speaking world. Chef Omar sports traditional Damascene attire—a sadriya shirt and vest, sharwal pants, and a wooden spoon tucked into a floral sash where men would traditionally brandish a pistol or dagger. He looks directly into the camera, smiling warmly, using Damascene slang to ingratiate his audience.

Chef Omar has provided a tether for many of the millions of displaced Syrians around the world who are navigating new languages, feelings, and flavors. He teaches them how to recreate classic Syrian cuisine using different ingredients in resourceful and easy-to-follow recipes. These include an innovative technique to make fried kibbeh—bulgur-and-meat balls—using sliced bread, and a strategy to prepare flan on a stovetop. Chef Omar once crafted typically laborious dolma—vegetables stuffed with ground beef and rice—in a hotel room, and he accepted a challenge to prepare an entire Ramadan iftar meal in just one hour during a YouTube livestream.

Like other social media chefs, Chef Omar is a culinary diplomat. In one episode, he charms an Estonian guest with the many shapes and forms of kibbeh—fried, grilled, simmered—a beloved national dish. For his Syrian followers, he is a means to return to a lost home. And although the tastes transport his viewers back to their childhoods, Chef Omar is also unafraid to break culinary taboos and sample recipes that diverge from the Syrian tradition. He offers viewers tips for shopping for hamburger meat in a new country or preparing a pizza in a pan.

The opening of Chef Omar’s brick-and-mortar eatery in March was the culmination of his many pursuits. His restaurant is a co*cktail of culinary creativity and advertising prowess. Every table on ribbon-cutting night was reserved; currencies from customers who had already visited from Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and the Gulf states were on display. The restaurant also featured Chef Omar-branded bread rolls and a replica set of his kitchen from his cooking channel, for hungry fans to take photos.

Foreign Policy ate a shawarma with chewy bread, zesty aioli, and hints of lemon. (It was delicious, but definitely not the best in the city.) On tap was Extreme Menderin soda, as many in Turkey are boycotting American cola products over the United States’ continued support for Israel. Other distinctive fast-food items on the menu included boneless chicken tenders with dynamite sushi sauce, mozzarella sticks, and a taco onion smashburger.

What Chef Omar’s new restaurant does not advertise is that the Syrian food influencer has been subject to a litany ofcriticism over the past two years. Even his sacrosanct shawarma has come under fire.

In 2022, Chef Omar was accused by the pro-opposition Orient News of pillorying a donation drive for displaced Syrians living in Idlib in northwest Syria, the country’s final rebel stronghold against Assad, while simultaneously appearing for an interview on a pro-government radio station. More than 90 percent of the 4.5 million people in Idlib live below the poverty line, and 1.9 million of them live in camps. Chef Omar apparently questioned the efficacy of working through charities as opposed to direct assistance. Syrians online were outraged.

In some ways, Chef Omar’s controversies are no different than the pitfalls faced by most celebrities and influencers. On the internet, no action or stance can please everyone. Some of Chef Omar’s socially conservative followers, for example, were upset to learn that his wife does not wear hijab. In other areas, however, Chef Omar’s problems are uniquely Syrian. Some Syrians criticize him for being “gray,” a term used to describe those who have not publicly defined their stance on the politics of the conflict.

Syrian refugees began to flee to Turkey at the outset of the 2011 uprising. But much larger amounts of them arrived by land in 2015 and 2016, after the Syrian government launched a wave of ruthless offensives to retake rebel-controlled towns. Polling indicates that most Syrian refugees in Turkey do not want to return to Syria under any circ*mstances. Still, Turkey’s Syrian diaspora is no monolith: Smaller numbers of Syrians arrived by plane, less due to political push factors but more in search of economic opportunity.

While Chef Omar says he aims to “separate cooking from politics,” many Syrians in the diaspora, especially those who oppose the Syrian government, judge him for not using his platform to speak out against Assad.

Many diaspora opposition journalists and activists have labeled Chef Omar outright as a backer of the Syrian government due to his silence. Even his mother, who started a social media feud by joining a competing cooking channel with his younger brother, declared online that Chef Omar was connected to high-ranking intelligence officers in the Syrian government, scorning him for not getting his brother out of his compulsory military service. Chef Omar responded to the allegations in a YouTube video by saying, “No—it’s my mom! How can I be in a fight with my mom?”

Since the grand opening of his restaurant, calls to boycott from activists and influencers have spread online. These came in response to claims that Chef Omar’s flies the Syrian government flag—a red, white, and black tricolor. (It was not on display when Foreign Policy visited.) The Syrian opposition uses a different banner that is a modified version of the flag that the country introduced in 1932, which is green, white, and black. For many Syrians living in Turkey, seeing the Syrian government’s flag adds insult to injury in a country where they are experiencing rising xenophobia and anuptickin raids, detentions, and deportations.

The flag saga—whether manufactured or not—alienated some Syrians who had come to love Chef Omar and his food. On Instagram, he said that the allegations had all been a “smear campaign.”

It wasn’t the first time Chef Omar argued he had been unfairly targeted. He has plenty of long-standing critics, who claim that he only undertakes his various ventures for fame. In the aftermath of the devastating Feb. 6, 2023, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, he sought to rebuff those detractors by entering northern Syria to distribute food baskets.

“Any other person in my position would be living in Dubai,” he said, a city that is a symbol of excess and fantasy in the Middle East. “But this is my responsibility. It doesn’t let me sleep. It doesn’t give me comfort.” At the same time, Chef Omar continued to reference his opponents using “cheap channels and reporters’ groups” against him—begging the question of whether it is even possible for Syrians, divided as they are, to come together around something as unifying as food.

Despite this, some in Syria’s opposition believe that attempts to cancel Chef Omar will only make it harder for Syrians to unite and rebuild their country.

“We need people like [Chef Omar] who are successful examples to look up to,” said Nedal Malouf, a Syrian opposition journalist, in a video posted on YouTube. “His success is our success.”