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Begin New Search Topic Syrian War Publication Year within 10 Years

51. Turkey and China Tie Themselves in Knots Over Syria and Xinjiang

Author:
James M Dorsey
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Turkey expects Chinese support for its incursion into Syria against the Kurds, but in return, China expects Turkey to turn a blind eye to its persecution of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. Turkey’s refusal to fully recognize Kurdish rights is thus intertwined with China’s brutal crackdown in its troubled northwestern province. Both parties justify their actions as efforts in the fight against terrorism.
Topic:
Islam, Terrorism, Ethnic Cleansing, Conflict, Syrian War, and Kurds
Political Geography:
China, Turkey, Middle East, Asia, Syria, and Xinjiang

52. Turkey’s Invasion of Syrian Kurdistan as Seen from Tehran

Author:
Doron Itzchakov
Publication Date:
10-2019
Content Type:
Commentary and Analysis
Institution:
The Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies (BESA)
Abstract:
Though it prompted angry reactions from senior officials in Tehran, the Turkish attack on Syrian Kurdistan offers both pros and cons for the Islamic Republic – and the potential positives likely outweigh the negatives.
Topic:
Ethnicity, Conflict, Syrian War, and Kurds
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Tehran, Syria, and Kurdistan

53. The EU’s Approach to the Syrian Crisis: Turkey as a Partner?

Author:
Çiğdem Nas
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
The article aims to analyze the European Union (EU)’s approach to the Syrian crisis and to evaluate the role it attributes to Turkey. The EU’s approach staggered between supporting transition in Syria to a post-Assad regime and the need to protect itself against spill-over effects of the conflict. Two issues emerged as urgent priorities that determined the EU’s approach to the conflict. One of them was to control the outpouring of refugees fleeing war and oppression in Syria and the other was to deal with the growing threat of terrorism, mainly the ISIL threat. The influx of Syrian refugees through the Aegean and Balkan route to the EU surged in the summer of 2015 leading to practical and political problems for EU countries. In the meantime, ISIL related terror attacks in the EU created a major security problem and led several Member States to bring back border controls in the Schengen area. The EU turned to Turkey and sought Turkey’s cooperation in controlling the refugee flow and also keeping away the ISIL threat. The article looks at cooperation between Turkey and the EU and also points of contention that created hurdles in this cooperation.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Bilateral Relations, European Union, Refugee Crisis, Syrian War, and Borders
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

54. A Dance of Entanglement: The US-Turkish Relations in the Context of the Syrian Conflict

Author:
Burcu Sari Karademir
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
Alliances under unipolarity operate with different logic than under bipolarity. Unipolarity makes the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment more likely for the weaker states that need the unipole for the pursuit of their regional security interests. The article takes the US-Turkish relations within the context of Syrian conflict as exemplary and shows how the strategic discrepancies between the US-Turkish positions paved the way for Turkey’s abandonment in Syria. The article concludes that the unipole’s strategic alliance commitments are no longer reliable for regional allies to assume risky regional restructuring roles as they face the risk of abandonment on the halfway.
Topic:
International Relations, Alliance, Syrian War, and Unipolarity
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, Syria, United States of America, and Mediterranean

55. Relations between Turkey and Syria in the 1980’s and 1990’s: Political Islam, Muslim Brotherhood and Intelligence Wars

Author:
Behlül Özkan
Publication Date:
08-2019
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
International Relations Council of Turkey (UİK-IRCT)
Abstract:
The aim of this study is to examine how continuities and discontinuities over a period of nearly half a century have shaped the AKP government’s relationship with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and the Assad regime. From the start of the 1980s until the 2011 Arab Uprisings, relations between Turkey, Turkish Islamists, Syria, and the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood remained highly complex. Based on the information available from open sources and newspaper archives, this study terms the conflict between the Turkish and Syrian intelligence services that broke out in the 1980s as an “intelligence war.” Both countries viewed the PKK and the Muslim Brotherhood – domestic enemies which they were trying to stamp out – as useful actors to be played off against the other party. While the Syrian/PKK part of the equation was frequently alluded to by the Turkish media and Turkish academia, Turkey’s relations with the Muslim Brotherhood were gradually forgotten. Though open support for the Brotherhood was never an element in Ankara’s official foreign policy, Turkey’s intelligence and security forces did establish ties to the Brotherhood in order to strengthen Turkey’s hand against Syria and made use of the organization insofar as it was in their interest to do so.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Cold War, History, Syrian War, Islamism, and Muslim Brotherhood
Political Geography:
Turkey, Middle East, and Syria

56. Refugees and Water Security

Author:
Skylar Benedict
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Abstract:
Examining the historic roots of Jordan’s water management policy. First, Jordan deals with natural water scarcity arising from the country’s arid semi-desert climate and seasonally fluctuating surface water sources. Second, Jordan currently depends on costly water projects such as the Disi Water Conveyance Project and the King Abdullah Canal to meet its municipal, agricultural, and industrial water needs. Third, the sudden influx of refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war has led to an increased strain on water resources. While realistic, this narrative’s exclusive focus on the present hardships obscures a much longer history of water management in Jordan—one characterized by successive political conflicts and increasingly centralized and unsustainable water extraction policies—that has equally contributed to the country’s current scarcity challenges.
Topic:
Environment, Water, Refugees, and Syrian War
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, Jordan, and United States of America

57. Climate Change and the Syrian Conflict?

Author:
Marwa Daoudy
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies
Abstract:
Over the past few decades, a new narrative has emerged that seeks to link climate change with political and social unrest. This idea of a climate-conflict nexus is similar to the “water wars” scenario of the 1990s, in which the media and some scholars predicted that water scarcity would be the major driver of inter-state conflict in the twenty-first century. More recently, this climateconflict narrative has been applied to the Syrian case. According to this logic, climate change caused the 2006-2010 drought in Syria, the drought caused agricultural failure, agricultural failure caused poverty, and the resulting displacement and discontent culminated with the 2011 uprising. My forthcoming book, The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security (Cambridge University Press, spring 2020) questions this line of reasoning, arguing that government policies were at the heart of Syria’s vulnerabilities in the buildup to the uprising. Although global warming is real and international action is urgently needed, climate change was not what was at the forefront of the minds of Syrians in 2011. Instead, most people were focused on a moral ideal: the end of repression and injustice.
Topic:
Agriculture, Climate Change, Environment, Water, Food Security, Inequality, Syrian War, and Revolution
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

58. After 8 Years and 500,000 Dead, No ‘Normalization’ in Syria without Justice

Author:
Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Publication Date:
03-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
Today, 15 March, marks eight years of deadly conflict in Syria. Since 2011 half a million people have been killed, 11.9 million have been displaced from their homes and 13 million remain in dire need of humanitarian assistance. As the conflict enters its ninth year and the prevailing media narrative is that the civil war is coming to an end, civilians in Syria still face the threat of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Topic:
Human Rights, Humanitarian Aid, International Law, Syrian War, Justice, Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and Atrocities
Political Geography:
Middle East and Syria

59. The Weaponization of Minorities in Syria and Beyond

Author:
Mohanad Hage Ali
Publication Date:
01-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
The Syrian conflict has magnified threats to minorities with long-term implications both within and beyond Syria’s borders. The deployment of excessive firepower by the Russian and Iranian-backed Assad regime, and the concurrent rise of Islamic extremism have had both direct and indirect impacts on minorities. Local, regional, and international actors have weaponized minority groups to bolster their influence, further intensifying schisms in the Syrian social fabric and in the international community as a whole. The flow of one million Syrian refugees to Europe between 2015 and 2016 strengthened an already powerful wave of anti-immigration, nationalist populism throughout the continent and across the Atlantic. As an openly Islamophobic and, more implicitly, anti-Semitic movement, the wave has contributed to widening the scope of the Syrian conflict’s schismatic effects beyond the country’s borders.
Topic:
Minorities, Violent Extremism, Refugees, and Syrian War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, Middle East, and Syria

60. The Arms Trade and Syria

Author:
Shannon Dick
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Abstract:
In 2013, the United States began a secret operation to train and equip opposition forces fighting against the Assad regime in Syria. Through the CIA, the United States facilitated the transfer of an estimated $1 billion in arms, ammunition, and training to Syrian rebel groups in hopes of influencing a negotiated end to the war. But these were not the only weapons flowing throughout Syria — Syrian government stockpiles served as a key source of armaments, and countries from around the region funneled arms into the country to support a variety of actors. In this way, the story of weapons in Syria reads as a cautionary tale about the unintended and lasting consequences of arms transfers, especially to countries in conflict.
Topic:
Intelligence, Weapons, Arms Trade, and Syrian War
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, North America, and United States of America