Domestic and External Factors in the Syrian Conflict: Toward a Multi-causal Explanation

Gürcan, Efe Can

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-45465-4_11

Domestic and External Factors in the Syrian Conflict: Toward a Multi-causal Explanation

Efe Can Gürcan²

Chapter
First Online: 05 July 2020

394 Accesses

Abstract

What are the major domestic and external factors that have led to the emergence and diffusion of the 2011 Syrian conflict? Domestic factors concern Syria’s political-economic and political-ecological transitions since the 1970s, particularly the prominence of a resource-based, or extractivist, strategy of economic development, neoliberal restructuring, and inadequate environmental policies. This chapter argues that these factors have rendered Syria vulnerable to the destructive effect of external pressures associated with the role of geopolitics, proxy war, and foreign intervention. In terms of this chapter’s methodology, process tracing is used as the main guideline.

Keywords

Energy security
Environmental policy
Extractivism
Military alliance
Syria

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Notes

1.
Efe Can Gürcan, “Political Geography of Turkey’s Intervention in Syria: Underlying Causes and Consequences (2011–2016),” Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research 11, no. 1 (2018): 1–10, https://doi.org/10.1108/JACPR-10-2017-0329.
2.
Efe Can Gürcan, “Extractivism, Neoliberalism, and the Environment: Revisiting the Syrian Conflict from an Ecological Justice Perspective,” Capitalism Nature Socialism 30, no. 3 (2018): 91–109, https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2018.1516794.
3.
Andrew Bennett, “Process Tracing and Causal Inference,” in Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standard, ed. Henry E. Brady and David Collier, 2nd ed. (Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010), 207–19; Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005); Pascal Vennesson, “Case Studies and Process Tracing: Theories and Practices,” in Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective, ed. Della Porta Donatella and Michael Keating (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 223–39; and David Collier, “Understanding Process Tracing,” PS: Political Science and Politics 44, no. 4 (2011): 823–30, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096511001429.
4.
Gürcan, “Extractivism, Neoliberalism, and the Environment.”
5.
Augustus Richard Norton and Deanna J. Lampros-Norton, “Militant Protest and Political Violence under the Banner of Islam,” Armed Forces & Society 9, no. 1 (1982): 18, https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X8200900101; Alex J. Bellamy, Security Communities and Their Neighbours: Regional Fortresses or Global Integrators? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 122.
6.
Thomas Collelo, Syria: A Country Study (Washington: GPO, 1987); Shamel Azmeh, “Syria’s Passage to Conflict: The End of the ‘Developmental Rentier Fix’ and the Consolidation of New Elite Rule,” Politics & Society 44, no. 4 (2016): 499–523, https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329216674002.
7.
Azmeh, “Syria’s Passage to Conflict.”
8.
“World Bank Open Data,” 2016, https://data.worldbank.org.
9.
Azmeh, “Syria’s Passage to Conflict.”
10.
“International Energy Statistics,” EIA beta, accessed September 8, 2019, https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?c=4100000002000060000000000000g000200000000000000001&vs=INTL.44-1-AFRC-QBTU.A&vo=0&v=H&end=2015.
11.
“International Energy Statistics.”
12.
Omar S. Dahi and Yasser Munif, “Revolts in Syria: Tracking the Convergence between Authoritarianism and Neoliberalism,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 47, no. 4 (2012): 323–32, https://doi.org/10.1177/0021909611431682.
13.
Myriam Ababsa, “Crise Agraire, Crise Foncière et Sécheresse En Syrie (2000–2011),” Maghreb—Machrek 1, no. 215 (2013): 101–22, https://doi.org/10.3917/machr.215.0101.
14.
Azmeh, “Syria’s Passage to Conflict”; Francesca De Châtel, “The Role of Drought and Climate Change in the Syrian Uprising: Untangling the Triggers of the Revolution,” Middle Eastern Studies 50, no. 4 (2014): 521–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2013.850076.
15.
Nazih Richani, “The Political Economy and Complex Interdependency of the War System in Syria,” Civil Wars 18, no. 1 (2016): 45–68, https://doi.org/10.1080/13698249.2016.1144495.
16.
Peter H. Gleick, “Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria,” Weather, Climate, and Society 6, no. 1 (July 2014): 331–40, https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1.
17.
Christiane J. Fröhlich, “Climate Migrants as Protestors? Dispelling Misconceptions about Global Environmental Change in Pre-Revolutionary Syria,” Contemporary Levant 1, no. 1 (2016): 38–50, https://doi.org/10.1080/20581831.2016.1149355.
18.
Richani, “The Political Economy and Complex Interdependency of the War System in Syria.”
19.
Gleick, “Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria.”
20.
Fabrice Balanche, “La Modernisation Des Systèmes d’irrigation Dans Le Nord-Est Syrien: La Bureaucratie Au Coeur de La Relation Eau et Pouvoir,” Méditerrané 8, no. 119 (2012): 59–72.
21.
De Châtel, “The Role of Drought and Climate Change in the Syrian Uprising,” 525.
22.
Jessica Barnes, “Managing the Waters of Ba‘th Country: The Politics of Water Scarcity in Syria,” Geopolitics 14, no. 3 (2009): 515, https://doi.org/10.1080/14650040802694117.
23.
Eran Feitelson and Amit Tubi, “A Main Driver or an Intermediate Variable? Climate Change, Water and Security in the Middle East,” Global Environmental Change 44, no. 1 (May 2017): 39–48, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.03.001; David P. Forsythe, “Water and Politics in the Tigris–Euphrates Basin: Hope for Negative Learning?” in Water Security in the Middle East: Essays in Scientific and Social Cooperation, ed. Jean Axelrad Cahan (London: Anthem Press, 2017), 167–84, 978-1783085668; Gleick, “Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria”; and M. Salman and Wael Mualla, “The Utilization of Water Resources for Agriculture in Syria: Analysis of Current Situation and Future Challenges,” in International Seminars on Planetary Emergencies, 30th Session (Fourth Centenary of the Foundation of the First Academy of Sciences: “Academia Lynceorum” by Federico Cesi and Pope Clemente VIII, Erice, Italy: World Scientific, 2004), 263–74, https://doi.org/10.1142/9789812702753_0031.
24.
Fabrice Balanche, “Géographie de La Révolte Syrienne,” Outre-Terre 3, no. 29 (2011): 437–58.
25.
Michel Gueldry, “Changement Climatique et Sécurité Agroalimentaire Dans Le Monde Arabe,” Politique Étrangère 3, no. 1 (2013): 161–74, https://doi.org/10.3917/pe.133.0161.
26.
Ababsa, “Crise Agraire, Crise Foncière et Sécheresse En Syrie (2000–2011)”; Gleick, “Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria.”
27.
Gürcan, “Political Geography of Turkey’s Intervention in Syria.”
28.
Christopher Phillips, “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria,” Third World Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2015): 357–76, https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2015.1015788.
29.
Benjamin White, “The Nation-State Form and the Emergence of ‘Minorities’ in Syria,” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 7, no. 1 (2007): 64–85, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1754-9469.2007.tb00108.x; Omar Al-Ghazzi, “Syria,” in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, ed. John Stone et al. (Oxford, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 1–4.
30.
Phillips, “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria.”
31.
Azmeh, “Syria’s Passage to Conflict”; Phillips, “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria.”
32.
Hadi H. Jaafar and Eckart Woertz, “Agriculture as a Funding Source of ISIS: A GIS and Remote Sensing Analysis,” Food Policy 64, no. 1 (October 2016): 14–25, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2016.09.002; Richani, “The Political Economy and Complex Interdependency of the War System in Syria.”
33.
Richani, “The Political Economy and Complex Interdependency of the War System in Syria,” 13.
34.
Gürcan, “Political Geography of Turkey’s Intervention in Syria.”
35.
Gürcan.
36.
Bülent Aras, “Davutoğlu Era in Turkish Foreign Policy Revisited,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 16, no. 4 (2014): 404–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2014.938451; Bilgin Ayata, “Turkish Foreign Policy in a Changing Arab World: Rise and Fall of a Regional Actor?” Journal of European Integration 37, no. 1 (2014): 95–112, https://doi.org/10.1080/07036337.2014.975991; Efe Can Gürcan and Efe Peker, “A Class Analytic Approach to the Gezi Park Events: Challenging the ‘Middle Class’ Myth,” Capital & Class 39, no. 2 (June 2015): 321–43, https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816815584015; Efe Can Gürcan and Efe Peker, “Turkey’s Gezi Park Demonstrations of Summer 2013: A Marxian Analysis of the Political Moment,” Socialism & Democracy 28, no. 1 (2014): 70–89, https://doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2013.869872; Efe Can Gürcan and Efe Peker, Challenging Neoliberalism at Turkey’s Gezi Park: From Private Discontent to Collective Class Action (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); M. Sheharyar Khan, “The Transformation of Turkish Foreign Policy towards the Middle East,” Policy Perspectives 12, no. 1 (2015): 31–50, https://doi.org/10.13169/polipers.12.1.0031; Binnur Ozkececi-Taner, “Disintegration of the ‘Strategic Depth’ Doctrine and Turkey’s Troubles in the Middle East,” Contemporary Islam 11, no. 2 (July 2017): 201–14, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-017-0387-5; Ömer Taşpınar, “Turkey’s Strategic Vision and Syria,” The Washington Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2012): 127–40, https://doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2012.706519; and Mustafa Türkeş, “Decomposing Neo-Ottoman Hegemony,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18, no. 3 (2016): 191–216, https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2016.1176388.
37.
Igor Delanoë, “The Syrian Crisis: A Challenge to the Black Sea Stability,” Policy Brief (Istanbul: Center for International and European Studies, Kadir Has University, February 2014), https://www.khas.edu.tr/cms/cies/dosyalar/files/CIESPolicyBrief02.pdf; Gareth M. Winrow, “The Anatomy of a Possible Pipeline: The Case of Turkey and Leviathan and Gas Politics in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18, no. 5 (2016): 431–47, https://doi.org/10.1080/19448953.2016.1196012.
38.
Michael M. Gunter, “The Kurdish Spring,” Third World Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2013): 451–53, https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2013.785339; “The Rising Costs of Turkey’s Syrian Quagmire,” Europe & Central Asia (International Crisis Group, 2014), 37, https://www.crisisgroup.org/file/1151/download?token=HV5pDXAW; “Turkey and Iran: Bitter Friends, Bosom Rivals,” Middle East & North Africa (International Crisis Group, December 13, 2016), 5, https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/gulf-and-arabian-peninsula/iran/b051-turkey-and-iran-bitter-friends-bosom-rivals.
39.
Emel Parlar Dal, “Impact of the Transnationalization of the Syrian Civil War on Turkey: Conflict Spillover Cases of Isis and Pyd-Ypg/Pkk,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 29, no. 4 (2016): 1396–420, https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2016.1256948; Gunter, “The Kurdish Spring”; Gallia Lindenstrauss and Oded Eran, “The Kurdish Awakening and the Implications for Israel,” Strategic Assessment 17, no. 1 (April 2014): 83–93; Alireza Nader et al., “Regional Implications of an Independent Kurdistan” (Rand Corporation—National Defense Research Institute, 2016), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1400/RR1452/RAND_RR1452.pdf; Spyridon Plakoudas, “The Syrian Kurds and the Democratic Union Party: The Outsider in the Syrian War,” Mediterranean Quarterly 28, no. 1 (2017): 99–116, https://doi.org/10.1215/10474552-3882819; and Rod Thornton, “Problems with the Kurds as Proxies against Islamic State: Insights from the Siege of Kobane,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 26, no. 6 (2015): 865–85, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592318.2015.1095844.
40.
Gürcan, “Political Geography of Turkey’s Intervention in Syria”; Gerardo Otero and Efe Can Gürcan, “The Arab Spring and the Syrian Refugee Crisis,” Monitor, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives 22, no. 5 (February 2016): 16–17.
41.
Delanoë, “The Syrian Crisis: A Challenge to the Black Sea Stability”; F. William Engdahl, “The New Mediterranean Oil and Gas Bonanza (Part II: Rising Energy Tensions in the Aegean—Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria),” Global Research: Centre for Research on Globalization, January 27, 2013, https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-mediterranean-oil-and-gas-bonanza/29609; Pinar Ipek, “Oil and Intra-State Conflict in Iraq and Syria: Sub-State Actors and Challenges for Turkey’s Energy Security,” Middle Eastern Studies 53, no. 3 (2017): 406–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2016.1265511; and Winrow, “The Anatomy of a Possible Pipeline,” 431–47.
42.
Gavin Bridge and Michael Bradshaw, “Making a Global Gas Market: Territoriality and Production Networks in Liquefied Natural Gas,” Economic Geography 93, no. 3 (2017): 2–3, https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2017.1283212.
43.
Sami Nader, “Natural Gas Resources May Be Backstory in Syria War,” Center for Geopolitical Analysis, October 11, 2013, http://icmu.nyc.gr/%20Natural-Gas-Resources-May-Be-Backstory-in-Syria-War.
44.
Delanoë, “The Syrian Crisis: A Challenge to the Black Sea Stability.”
45.
Nafeez Ahmed, “Syria Intervention Plan Fueled by Oil Interests, Not Chemical Weapon Concern,” The Guardian, August 30, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/aug/30/syria-chemical-attack-war-intervention-oil-gas-energy-pipelines.
46.
Nader, “Natural Gas Resources May Be Backstory in Syria War.”
47.
Engdahl, “The New Mediterranean Oil and Gas Bonanza. Part II.”
48.
Raymond Hinnebusch, “Syrian Foreign Policy under Bashar Al-Asad,” Ortadoğu Etütleri 1, no. 1 (July 2009): 7–26.
49.
Hinnebusch, 18–19.
50.
Hinnebusch, 18–19.
51.
Türkeş, “Decomposing Neo-Ottoman Hegemony”; Ziya Öniş, “Turkey and the Arab Revolutions: Boundaries of Regional Power Influence in a Turbulent Middle East,” Mediterranean Politics 19, no. 2 (2014): 203–19, https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2013.868392.
52.
Barak Barfi, “The Real Reason Why Iran Backs Syria,” The National Interest, January 24, 2016, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-real-reason-why-iran-backs-syria-14999.
53.
Sean Gordon, “Russian Resolve: Why Syria Matters to Putin,” The Globe and Mail, April 8, 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/russian-resolve-why-syria-matters-to-putin/article34643406/.
54.
Phillips, “Sectarianism and Conflict in Syria.”
55.
A. Murat Ağdemir, “Israel and the Gas Resources of the Levant Basin,” Ortadoğu Etütleri 6, no. 2 (2015): 136–54.

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Istinye University, Istanbul, Turkey
Efe Can Gürcan

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Efe Can Gürcan
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Department of International Relations, Sakarya University, Sakarya, Turkey
Philipp O. Amour

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Gürcan, E.C. (2020). Domestic and External Factors in the Syrian Conflict: Toward a Multi-causal Explanation. In: Amour, P. (eds) The Regional Order in the Gulf Region and the Middle East. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45465-4_11

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45465-4_11
Published: 05 July 2020
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-45464-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-45465-4
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