Syrian Studies

The forced transfer of children from one group to another is considered an element of the crime of genocide, yet this subject has attracted little scholarly attention. Using the history of the mass transfer of Armenian children during the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1922 as a case, this article argues that the study of child transfer and recovery is critical to both the history of human rights and a more sophisticated understanding of genocide, including the forms of genocide accompanying the colonial encounter. The experience of transferred children and their recovery or loss can help better clarify the historical relationship between the concepts of the rights of the child and individual human and minority rights as these have evolved before and immediately after World War II. Moreover, this article also contends that it is important to characterize child transfer as genocide, as opposed to colonial assimilation or acculturation as a feature of modernization, when explaining the broader social impact of mass violence, forced migration, and cultural destruction on victim/survivor and perpetrator communities.

INTRODUCTION Despite a speculated assault by the Assad regime on opposition controlled the Idlib region, Turkey and Russia have reached an agreement that averted the attack. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Stabilization of the Situation in Idlib’s De-escalation Zone was signed by Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and his Turkish counterpart Minister of National Defense Hulusi Akar following the Sochi summit held, in the Russian coastal city of Sochi, on September 17, 2018. In addition to its success in averting a humanitarian catastrophe, the Sochi accord will have several implications on the ground, and will further influence the future of the Idlib region and Syria in general. Yet, this accord would face several challenges in both short and long terms.

The  political  and  diplomatic  relations  between  Turkey  and  Syria  have  often  been  characterized  by  tensions  and conflicts. Among the critical moments that have constantly occurred between these two Middle Eastern countries there is a particular common thread that is rarely subjected to critical analysis: water conflicts. In these respects, Ankara and Damascus have given rise to decades of strenuous disputes in order to obtain a geopolitical advantage in terms of hydro-hegemony.  The battlefield was the Euphrates River, one  of the most iconic  waterways  in western Asia. Dangerous tensions between Turks and Syrians occurred until 1998, when the Adana Protocol was signed. Since then, the two so-called ‘riparian’ states have inaugurated a new phase in their foreign relations, particularly concerning the common management of transboundary waters. To cement this new era of peace and stability, both governments have launched a joint project renamed ‘Friendship Dam’, a water infrastructure on the Orontes River, located on the border between Turkey and Syria. However, the crisis erupted in 2011 and the umpteenth military operation carried out by the Turkish army on Syrian soil in October 2019 have significantly thwarted the political coordination process aimed at building this mutually beneficial project.

The Syrian civil war has seen the weaponization of its land and property rights system by the primary combatant groups in the country. The government is the most robust in its use of the tenure system to locate, target, destroy, confiscate, cleanse, and gain revenue by way of the institutions and attributes comprising the system. Based on fieldwork with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, this article describes seven ways the Syrian government is currently using the land and property rights system in its military-on-civilian engagements. While the objective of such use is presumably to permanently prevail over opposition civilian constituencies, the article describes how this actually creates evidence usable for effective restitution of lands and properties subsequent to the war. Introduction The ongoing civil war in Syria has emerged as a laboratory of new weapons used by the various sides in the conflict. While a number of these are purely kinetic-involving both crude and innovative forms of firepower, executions, troop movements and strategies-others take advantage of society based structures and institutions which facilitate targeting specific constituencies within the civilian population and then become attached to kinetic objectives. Statutory land and property rights systems are particularly vulnerable to being used in this way, with significant effect and lasting repercussions. While the Syrian government is not the first to use aspects of land and property rights systems in the pursuit of military objectives, it is the most current, egregious and sophisticated. This paper describes how the statutory land and property rights system has become an important weapon in the Syrian conflict with a number of uses, but with the ultimate counterinsur-gency strategic objective of spatially and permanently prevailing over the insurgency and its civilian constituencies. Permanently ridding certain landscapes of opposition supporters and replacing these with pro-regime inhabitants is just as important to the overall objective of 'prevailing' as is military victory over insurgent combatants for the Syrian government.

As the crisis in Syria keeps escalating and the violent crackdown of the Bashar al-Assad regime results in more civilian deaths, the growing instability and civil opposition is significantly challenging the die-hard regime and raises questions regarding how much longer it can keep up with the deteriorating domestic situation and the increasing international pressure. More importantly, the troubling question that emerges is what might happen when the regime is finally overthrown?

This papers aims at investigating the relationship between traditional and social media during the first six months of the Syrian uprising. Thanks to direct testimony made available to the author by various cyber activists inside and outside Syria and through constant monitoring of the official propaganda and the coverage of the Syrian events by the two main pan-Arab satellite TVs, this article intends to investigate how both the regime and the activists attempt to represent the " real events on the ground ". In a country where the foreign and pan-Arab press have been mostly expelled since the beginning of the protests and the consequent repression, these two opposite poles heavily fight on the media level. On the one hand, the propaganda dominates traditional media and has sought to show familiarity with new methods, while maintaining the same content and rhetorical tone. On the other hand, the activists, masters of the new media, attempted to overcome the limitations of their tools, aiming at more traditional forms of communication. In both cases, the Internet has emerged as the main weapon of this media confrontation.

It presents a brief history of the role of religion in the history of Syria and the Middle East from early Roman times to the rise of ISIS, with particular relevance to understanding the genesis of the regional civil war sparked in 2011 as a result of the Arab Spring uprisings. It contains portraits of Syria's religious and sectarian communities, describes their origins and development over time, and identifies sources of intractable conflict among some groups.  Its source material varies from primary source documents to books, magazines, Web sites, and ruminations on personal experience that that mix memoir with historical perspective. It fills a gap in recent years with respect to scholarship on the relationship among Middle Eastern Sunni Muslims, Shiites, Christians, and sects perceived as heretical or nontraditional such as Alawite, Bahai, Druze, Mandaean, and Yezidi. It engages with recent scholarship on religious studies, economic history, the study of democratization, Syrian history, and history of the Baath Arab Socialist Party in Iraq and Syria.

Mit den Golanhöhen eroberte Israel 1967 auch fünf drusische Dörfer. Die meisten der Golan-Drusen haben die israelische Staatsbürgerschaft trotz erheblichem Druck nicht angenommen. Sie leben seit 50 Jahren in einem Provisorium, halten Kontakt nach Syrien und protestieren gegen die Besatzung. Der Bürgerkrieg im Nachbarland ändert ihre Situation nun aber grundlegend.

I am almost confident that most of you would not open the door to a Syrian refugee if you have the slightest doubt that this person could harm you in any way. I am also confident that this doubt and fear could be explained and dissolved and that inclusion could triumph.
In this paper, I posit that the similarity-attraction hypothesis, the integrated threat theory(ITT), the contact hypothesis, the common in-group identity model, and the mutual identity differentiation model could clarify some of the factors that are at stake when it comes to the inclusion and the integration of the Syrian refugees in host societies.

By getting involved in the “Arab Spring”, Qatar was determined to continue waging its foreign policy aimed at strengthening the positions of the country combined with the intention to create corresponding markets outside the country for Qatari gas. The
Russia-Iran-US agreement on the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons, along with the newly-emerging Iran-US approchement, urged Qatar to re-think its Syrian agenda, especially in light of the diplomatic blockade by the Gulf states. It is concluded in the article that after the Syrian crisis, Qatar will continue seeking gas markets in order to ensure its national
interests.

In Turkey, it is obvious that there has been a huge academic gap in Syrian studies and scholars dealing with Syrian politics and foreign policy generally do not go over the pre-Baath period. The main objective of this book is to analyze a neglected period of Syrian foreign policy during the so-called pre-Baath period from 1946 to 1963 in a historical perspective.

In the book, it is argued that foreign policy behavior of Syrian politicians regardless of their class, ideology and political orientations depended on historically rooted pragmatism in which interest calculations, shifting alliances and external patronage had special importance. In this respect, the book yields insights into the roots of Syrian foreign policy in the decades preceding the al-Assad dynasty.

Voici la première étude sur la guerre civile syrienne faite à partir d’entretiens réalisés en Syrie même et dans les pays voisins. 2011 : des centaines de milliers de Syriens de toutes confessions et origines ethniques manifestent pacifiquement pour réclamer la démocratisation du régime. La violence de la répression les contraint à prendre les armes, à organiser une contre-société et à regrouper des unités militaires improvisées au sein de l’Armée syrienne libre.
Après 2013, cette logique inclusive et unanimiste cède progres- sivement devant la montée des groupes transnationaux comme le PKK et l’État islamique, marginalisant les groupes les plus modérés.
Comment se structure l’économie de guerre? Quels sont les effets de la guerre sur la société syrienne? Quelles nouvelles hiérarchies communautaires et sociales résultent de la violence généralisée? Comment les trajectoires sociales des Syriens sont-elles affectées?
Un livre unique qui combine une recherche de terrain – rare sur le conflit syrien – et une réflexion théorique novatrice sur les situations de guerre civile.

The documentary depicts the journey of a teenage girl and her mother who move to California in 2012 because of the Syrian civil war. Together they learn to live in a different culture and face challenges to their traditions - ­all while endeavoring to build a better future.

Syria’s main cities, beginning with Damascus and Aleppo, are padded with neighborhoods whose housing, design, and sewage facilities, are the product of the residents themselves. Known in the common official dictum as “the zones of illicit habitat,” such neighborhoods have been constructed from scratch by the inhabitants themselves, defying all kinds of rules and regulations imposed by state and municipal authorities.

This project focuses on one such Aleppo “illicit” neighborhood at three interrelated levels. First, it examines the norms of the habitat created by the inhabitants themselves. The latter have to decide not only at planning their own homes, but also public infrastructures, such as roads and pavements, water, electricity, telecommunication and sewage facilities. Second, it analyzes the contractual norms that lie behind the exchange and sale of properties. Since such neighborhoods fall outside state regulations, the users must create their own contractual norms to exchange property, in such a way that contracts would eventually become “legal” once endorsed by state officials. Third, we examine the private and public norms that help construct the space for a “society of individuals.” Taking into consideration Erving Goffman’s motto that “the street is a society,” we follow actors in their face-to-face situated encounters, paving the way to the dialogical structures that make the existence of a “society” possible.

The Syrian Social Nationalist Party devoted itself to reviving and unifying the Syrian nation and establishing this nation’s complete independence over its historical homeland, Greater Syria. It continues its struggle today, influencing and shaping Lebanese and Syrian society and politics. Yet, the party remains largely unknown and misunderstood, a condition that stems from the lack of any comprehensive study of it. This book fills this gap.

Based on an extensive and thorough examination of Arabic, French, and English primary sources, the monograph is the first comprehensive, systematic history of the SSNP to date, detailing its struggle to fulfill its nationalist vision and establish a secular, independent state in Greater Syria through a thorough analysis of its formation, evolution, and political activities in Lebanon and Syria.

I. PROSPECTS FOR PEACE OR WAR II. MAJOR TRENDS IN FORCE STRENGTH III. COMPARATIVE LAND FORCE STRENGTH: ACTIVE VERSUS MOBILIZED STRENGTH IV. COMPARATIVE AIR STRENGTH: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY V. COMPARATIVE NAVAL STRENGTH: PERIPHERAL MISSIONS VI. TOTAL RESOURCES: RECAPITALIZATION, FORCE MODERNIZATION, AND IMPACT ON EFFECTIVENESS VII. THE MILITARY FORCES OF ISRAEL VIII. THE MILITARY FORCES OF SYRIA IX. WAR ON THE GOLAN HEIGHTS X. CONTINUING EXTERNAL ASYMMETRIC WARS SOURCES AND METHODS OTHER BOOKS BY ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

In this study, I present a new model for analyzing sociolinguistic variation within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT) and the Gradual Learning Algorithm (GLA). This model contributes to the advancement of sociolinguistic methodology as well as to OT and the GLA, unifying both linguistic and social factors. I propose a number of social constraints and incorporate them with linguistic constraints in the GLA. I show that incorporating social constraints yields variant-usage percentages that match real life occurrences. I follow the evaluation process of stochastic grammar in which social constraints are treated like linguistic constraints on a continuous scale of ranking strictness. Their ranking values may differ from one speaker or group of speakers to another. These differences in the ranking values may result in intra- and inter-speaker, intra- and inter-group, intra- and inter-community, or intra- and inter-dialect variation. The number and type of social constraints involved influence the percentage of occurrence of each variant and affect the ranking values of other constraints and the grammar chosen by a speaker or a group of speakers at a particular time and place.

This model enables us to show the effect of linguistic and social constraints simultaneously. It allows us to investigate individual as well as group grammars and shows that those grammars may act independently from each other. It also enables us to project expected percentages of variation by manipulating either the ranking values of constraints or the pair distribution of the output. Evidence comes from the study of the naturally occurring speech of migrant rural speakers of Colloquial Arabic to the city of Hims, Syria. These speakers show different degrees of variation, particularly regarding the use of the two variants [q] and [ʔ], based on various social factors, such as age, gender, residential area, and social class.

The aim of the study is to show how rural migrants adopt the new phonological system of the urban dialect to appear prestigious. The study will focus on the sound change of [q] to [ʔ] and the four stable variants [t] and [s] and [d] and [z]. It will show that variation may be influenced by different factors. The variable use of [q] and [ʔ] is attributed to prestige and social factors. The use of [t] and [s] and [d] and [z] is not social in nature; it has developed historically from the Standard Arabic (SA) [Ɵ] and [ð] respectively as a response to markedness constraints. Today, this variation is stable and each of the four variants is used in specific lexical items. Faithfulness constraints play a major role in maintaining the pronunciation of the input as [t] and [s] and [d] and [z] in the output. This stable phenomenon is further explained in terms of the two opposing effects of frequency (Bybee 2001).

In a situation where prestige plays a role in adopting a new variant, as in the case of rural migrants to the city of Hims, social constraints are viewed as the motivating force behind changing a grammar at a particular time and place. However, one should take into account that the activation of social constraints depends on the speaker’s selection or choice to activate them or not. Hence, these constraints may rank very high in the speech of a speaker who is highly aware of the social values attached to a certain sound. On the other hand, they may rank very low in the speech of a person who, for example, does not care to adopt a new form.

A theory that can take into account all the factors that lead to variation is a better theory than one that takes into account social factors in isolation and ignores grammatical factors or vice versa. Integrating social constraints into formal theory and showing that social constraints can have equal weight or even more weight than grammatical constraints in conditioning variation and change is essential in this study. Including social constraints in the computation provides explanation of the observed sociolinguistic variation between [q] and [ʔ] among members of the same social group or among different speakers or social groups. Interacting social constraints with linguistic constraints in the same framework is a simple comprehensive method to depict and explain the mental process of a speaker at a certain time and/or place. Feeding the GLA with the right output distribution gives the specific ranking values or grammar of each speaker or group of speakers. In other words, the model takes advantage of the stochastic grammar embedded in the GLA to generate grammars that match real life output percentages without trying all the possible rankings of constraints and counting the times those rankings give a certain output. Furthermore, where a statistical analysis fails to indicate the interaction between one social factor and others, the specificity implemented in the GLA by dividing a social factor into a number of social constraints enables us to see interaction among the same social constraints that emerged as insignificant in the statistical analysis. In this sense, implementing social factors as constraints and accounting for sociolinguistic variation within the framework of OT and the GLA has an advantage over other theories.

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Choosing and structuring a word, making a statement, and comprehending the formulated statement require complexprinciples andprocesses. Within this context, complicated procedures and processes might be faced in the second language learning as well. Learning a second language means grasping the syntacticprinciples of a language and transforming these principles into language skills. In our very specific study, ten Syrian primary school students comingfrom diverse psychological and sociological backgrounds, and being at varying ages were investigated. The participants were asked to narrate the pictured book Frog, Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer in Turkish language and the narrations were audio-taped by the researchers. Based on a descriptive research design, the data were collected and analysed qualitatively. As a result of this study which investigated the morphosyntactic developmental features of Syrian primary school students, diverse and common morpho-syntactic features were detec...

Te total number of registered Syrians in Turkey reached 2.5 million by the end of 2015. After fve years during which Turkey claims to have been maintaining an ‘open-door’ policy for those seeking protection, the Syrians inTurkey are still given only ‘temporary protec- tion’ status, which limits their access to the labor force, education, healthcare, and other support systems. With a majority of those who are registered being under 18 years old, not knowing Turkish and having minimal access to a basic education, the problems of integration into and acceptance by the host-country society will only grow in time. Te Syrians, when they can fnd employment on the black market, are paid less than half the minimum wage, work without security or job safety, or even any guarantee of payment. As the Syrian border area is being militarized and repressed parallel to developments in Turkish politics, and the situation in Syria is not improving but dislocating more people each day, more and more Syrians are joining the transit migrants in making life-threatening journeys to reach Europe, paying whatever savings they have left to human smugglers. Whether or not they will one day return to their left-behind ‘paradise’ or reach their ‘imagined paradise’ – Europe – they seem to be stuck in ‘purgatory’ in Turkey without any prospect of making the place a ‘home’.
Keywords: Refugees, Syrians, Turkey, integration, ‘temporary protection centers’

در این مقاله نگارنده در صدد است تا با نگاهی اجمالی به بررسی تحولات اجتماعی و سیاسی در سوریه در طول تاریخ پر تلاطم این کشور بپردازد، و روشن سازد که چه عواملی منجر به شکل‌گیری شکاف‌های سیاسی، اجتماعی و فرهنگی در این کشور شده است. نگارنده با بررسی تاریخ سوریه علل‌الخصوص در دوران امپراطوری عثمانی و بعد از جنگ جهانی دوم در تلاش بوده تا به علل ایجاد این شکاف‌ها در بستر تاریخی آن بپردازد. همچنین در راستای شناخته بهتر گروه‌های معارض درگیر در بحران سوریه، نگارنده با دیدی تحلیلی-- توصیفی دیدگاه‌های اصلی معارضان را در چارچوب سه طیف فکری" سکولاریسم، اسلام‌گرای میانه و اسلام‌گرای تندرو" مورد بررسی قرار می‌دهد. در ادامه سابقه گروه‌های معارض در تاریخ سوریه به صورت اجمالی و بخصوص بعد از به قدرت رسیدن حافظ اسد در سال 1970 بررسی شده است. در نهایت آینده گروه‌های معارض در سوریه و نقشی که آنها در آینده سوریه می‌توانند داشته باشند مورد بررسی قرار گرفته است و اینکه در صورت به قدرت رسیدن گروه‌های تندرو اسلامی در سوریه چه سرنوشتی در انتظار اقلیت‌ها علل‌الخصوص علویان خواهد بود.

Civil War in Syria created a large scale humanitarian crisis causing a mass human migration up to seven million in total. The largest neighboring country-Turkey has the greatest number of Syrian refugees exceeding 2.7 million. In the expectation of a quick resolution for the conflict and sending the immigrants back, the host country has taken only palliative temporary actions. This study investigates the options that Turkey has for the immigration problem. Elaborating on integration techniques for immigrants, the paper suggests possible policies for implementation of social integration in the future decades. Based on strategic management principles, the author presents advantages and disadvantages of integration, maintenance of status quo, and prevention of immigration.

تبحث الورقة سبل تحويل مبادئ الثورة إلى قضية في أذهان السوريين وذلك انطلاقا من دراسة التجربة الفلسطينية التي تمكنت من غرس قضيتها في الأجيال اللاحقة ومعرفة ادواتها وسياساتها المستخدمة، ثم تحديد العوائق أمام تحويل الحالة السورية إلى قضية يحملها السوريون بكافة أطيافهم

Music is a powerful force represented in many different countries as a cultural treasure with many colorful threads of various textures. Occasionally, a common thread of a similar color and texture is found and a meaningful and enriching exchange or comparison can be made. In an ethnomusicological study of Moroccan Gnawa music and Syrian Arabic-Jazz Fusion, a golden thread appeared in the form of trance and diasporic identity. In these cultures, music often bears the burden of a ‘great sorrow’ and translates itself into trance or ‘ecstasy’ through a multi sensory and interaesthetic experience involving gestural, musical, olfactory, and linguistic systems. To achieve this effect of tarab in Syrian-Egyptian music or hal in ritual Gnawa practice, the musical pacing is rooted in traditional text or the pacing of ancient poetry with drones to heighten tonal awareness and sparing modulations to create a strong sense of home. It is this home that provides the roots for a diasporic identity.

Azzam, F. (2021).  If you are Syrian these days. (G. Alatrash, Trans.). Gutter Magazine. 
(The magazine of new Scottish and international writing), 24, p. 13-17. 

YouTube link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpobMibtOzA

Original Arabic:  https://dahnon.org/archives/7069

"The Contemporary Art Scene in Syria. Social Critique and an Artistic Movement" focuses on the expanding contemporary art scene in Syria, particularly Damascus, during the first decade of the twenty-first century and considers it within the history of committed and engaged art in the country. The 2000s were characterized by a high degree of experimentation as young artists began to work with artistic media that were new in Syria, such as video, installation and performance art. They were rethinking the role of artists in society and looking for ways to reach audiences in a more direct manner and address socio-cultural and socio-political issues.