Five Years After July 25: Understanding Tunisia Through Intertwined Crises

A protest organized in Tunis under the slogan “People are hungry while the prisons are full,” denouncing political repression and worsening social and economic conditions in Tunisia, on May 16, 2026. (Photo by Imen Ben Youssef / Hans Lucas via AFP) Governance & Politics Tunisia Five Years After July 25: Understanding Tunisia Through Intertwined Crises Since President Kais Saied’s power grab five years ago, Tunisia has gone through one crisis after another, where the migration crisis, worsening socioeconomic conditions, and the shrinking of liberties are the result of the new political system. TIMEP contributor July 29, 2026 July 29, 2026 In the five years since President Kais Saied’s July 25, 2021 power grab, Tunisia’s political system has been reshaped. A new constitution has concentrated power in the presidency, elections have been held under weakened institutional checks and against a shrinking opposition, and the state of emergency, first declared in 2015, was extended for the tenth time in January. The anniversary of the power grab offers an opportunity to take stock of what has emerged since, with the country increasingly being burdened by accumulating crises. Issues such as migration, economic deterioration, and the shrinking of civic and political space have become interlocking features of the post-2021 political order. Weaponizing migration amid worsening socioeconomic conditions Nowhere is this clearer than in the state’s handling of the issue of migration. In 2023, President Saied claimed that irregular migration from sub-Saharan Africa was part of a “criminal plan” to alter Tunisia’s demographic make-up. Those remarks marked a turning point in the official discourse, framing migration as a national security issue, as Tunisian authorities cracked down on migrants and civil society groups defending them. Meanwhile, the European Union struck a border externalization deal with Tunisia, supporting the authorities as they pursued their anti-migrant policies. The official discourse helped exacerbate the problem. In April 2026, Tunisian MP Tarak Mahdi sparked outrage after denying reports that a sub-Saharan migrant women had been raped, saying that “Tunisian women are beautiful enough.” And when a video documenting the sexual assault of a pregnant sub-Saharan migrant went viral in June, the Ministry of Interior quickly said the incident was old, and that the video was part of a coordinated smear campaign. Such narratives crowd out the public sphere, cast aside sober debate while doing little in the way of finding sustainable solutions. What remains are protests; some denouncing racism and the government’s treatment of migrants, and others against the presence of migrants and calling for their deportation. The weaponization of migration issues is unfolding against a backdrop of socioeconomic deterioration. Public debt has surged above 80 percent of GDP, and the country has become increasingly reliant on central bank financing and domestic borrowing. Inflation, which peaked at over 10 percent in early 2023, has eased but remains above 5 percent, impacting the population’s purchasing power. Youth unemployment sits at around 38 percent, while a high number of young graduates are leaving the country for better opportunities. Shrinking civic and political space As living conditions deteriorated, civic and political freedoms have also come under increasing pressure. Authorities moved to dismantle both civil society and the political class through suspensions, prosecutions, and prison sentences. The targets cut across ideological lines to include civil society organizations, lawyers, journalists, and political opponents, which suggests that the crackdown is aimed less at any particular ideology than at anyone capable of organizing, documenting, mobilizing, or publicly contesting state policy. Decree 88, one of the 2011 revolution’s legal gains which regulates associations, has been instrumentalized by the Tunisian authorities to suspend NGOs, and as a result, at least 25 organizations were temporarily suspended over the past year. Notably, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate the Tunisian League of Human Rights (LTDH) was suspended in April 2026. The LTDH challenged what it deemed an unjustified and arbitrary measure, but a hearing was scheduled on July 15, then postponed until July 29, well past the 30-day window the suspension was meant to cover. The crackdown also targeted the individuals behind these organizations. On March 19, 2026, Saadia Mosbah, president of the anti-racism organization Mnemty (My Dream) was sentenced to eight years in prison after spending two years in pretrial detention. A month later, the treasurer of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) was interrogated twice, banned from traveling, with other members of the organization also receiving similar summons. The same pattern extended to the political sphere, where opposition figures increasingly faced conspiracy and other security-related charges. The clearest example was what was known as the “Conspiracy Case” of 2023, a mass trial involving 40 defendants ranging from opposition politicians to lawyers and business figures accused of plotting to overthrow the president, who called them “traitors and terrorists.” On April 18, 2025, the Tunis Criminal Court convicted 37 defendants, with sentences ranging from four to 74 years. The Tunis court of appeal later upheld the convictions on November 28, 2025, for all but three of the appellants, and some sentences were even increased for some. The “Conspiracy Case 2” was also opened in 2023, and targeted a broader group of defendants accused of “conspiracy against the internal security of the state.” The list of defendants spans leadership from the Ennahda Movement, former government officials, former intelligence figures, and even Saied’s former chief of staff, Nadia Akacha. Some of the defendants from Ennahdha also faced terrorism-related charges in the “Secret Apparatus Case,” and were accused of running a parallel and clandestine internal security wing. Rached Ghannouchi, the party’s leader, was a defendant in both cases as well as others. He was sentenced to life in prison, in addition to 30 years for terrorism-related charges. Other defendants, including Nadia Akacha and former foreign minister Rafik Abdessalem, were sentenced to 35 years in prison in absentia. Other opposition figures faced separate prosecutions under different legal frameworks. One notable example is Abir Moussi, leader of the Free Destourian Party, who has been detained since October 2023 on charges related to her criticism of the electoral process, among others. The Tunis Court of Appeal sentenced her on March 13, 2026 to 10 years in prison. Amnesty International said that Moussi was targeted “solely for her peaceful political activism and the exercise of her right to freedom of expression.” Despite the crackdown, people are mobilizing. In November 2025, thousands took to the streets of Tunis to protest “injustice and repression.” In the same week, journalists marched against restrictions on the press and freedom of speech. Families of political prisoners also launched the National Coordination for the Liberation of Political Prisoners on January 14, 2026, on the revolution’s fifteenth anniversary. In June, lawyers staged a national strike calling for the independence of the judiciary and the resignation of the Minister of Justice. Five years later: Implications and recommendations On the fifth anniversary of President Saied’s power grab, three issues will indicate the limitations of the regime’s authority and its trajectory. The first is the July 29 LTDH appeal ruling, which will show whether courts are willing to push back against the growing use of NGO suspensions as a tool of administrative pressure. A ruling in favor of the LTDH could encourage other organizations to challenge those suspensions. The second is the fate of the stalled parliamentary draft amending Decree 88 on the freedom of associations, whose passage would codify restrictive practices that have so far been enforced on an ad hoc basis. The third is the EU’s financial relationship with Tunisia, which remains one of the few external levers that could exert some pressure on Tunisian authorities. The absence of conditionality in the migration cooperation framework sends a signal that civil society crackdowns no longer carry enough diplomatic or financial cost. Yet Tunisia’s trajectory will not be determined by legislation, court rulings, or international leverage alone. How political change may emerge remains uncertain. The forms of mobilization that defined the post-2011 transition can no longer be taken for granted, while new voices, actors, and avenues of contestation can continue to emerge under increasingly restrictive conditions. Whether these efforts will lead to meaningful political change remains an open question. History suggests that no political order is permanent, even if the pathways through which change occurs are not always clear. Five years after July 25, the challenge is not simply to document Tunisia’s successive crises, but to understand the political order they have come to define, and what remains beyond it. READ NEXT Governance & Politics Syria January 1, 1970 Policy Paper: U.S.-Syria Policy: What’s Next Post-Caesar Repeal? August 3, 2026 by TIMEP August 3, 2026 by TIMEP August 3, 2026 Governance & Politics Tunisia July 23, 2026 Tunisia’s Democratic Backsliding: Five Years Since Saied’s Power Grab July 9, 2026 by TIMEP July 23, 2026 10:00 am by TIMEP July 23, 2026 10:00 am Security & Conflict Governance & Politics Lebanon January 1, 1970 What Does the Trilateral Framework Mean for Lebanon? 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