Proceedings of the 8th International Academic Conference on Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The Challenges of Natıon Buıldıng ın Syrıa and the Syrıan Cıvıl War
İbrahim Akkan
ABSTRACT:
Nation-building, conceptually, is the formation of bonds that hold society together and harmonize the community within the national borders. With the emergence of the nation-state concept, national states adopted this policy to create social harmony among the communities and to ensure political legitimacy. In this regard, this essay will focus on the application of the nation-building concept in the Syrian Arab Republic since its independence and will analyse the relevance of this process to the civil war, erupted in 2011. It is possible to mention a twosided relevance between the nation building process in Syria and The Syrian Civil War. One side is that, the failure of building single national identity in Syria by integrating the diverse ethnic, religious, and sectarian groups living in this country is one of the main reasons of the civil war. The Assad regime’s policies, generally described as authoritarianism and favouritism towards the Alawite minority, have increased tensions and alienated large segments of the population. The other side is that the civil war turned into a significant blow dealt to the process of nation-building in this country. This essay intends to analyse this two-side approach to provide perspectives for the potential pathways of conflict resolution in Syria.
keywords: Nation-building, Syrian Civil War, Conflict Resolution