Non-State Armed Actors in the Middle East: Geopolitics, Ideology, and Strategy

278 Pages·2018·2.99 MB·English

by  Murat Yeşiltaş

Edited by Murat Ye¸silta¸s
and Tuncay Karda¸s
NON-STATE
ARMED ACTORS
IN THE
MIDDLE EAST
GEOPOLITICS, IDEOLOGY, AND STRATEGY
Non-State Armed Actors in the Middle East
Murat Yeşiltaş · Tuncay Kardaş
Editors
Non-State Armed
Actors in the Middle
East
Geopolitics, Ideology, and Strategy
Editors
Murat Yeşiltaş Tuncay Kardaş
Sakarya University Sakarya University
Adapazarı, Sakarya, Turkey Adapazarı, Sakarya, Turkey
ISBN 978-3-319-55286-6 ISBN 978-3-319-55287-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-55287-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017936931
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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C
ontents
Part I Non-State Armed Actors in the Middle East:
A Conceptual and Analytical Framework
1 Introduction: The Phenomenon of Non-state
Armed Actors and Patterns of Violent Geopolitics
in the Middle East 3
Murat Yeşiltaş and Tuncay Kardaş
2 The Transformation of the Regional Order
and Non-state Armed Actors: Pathways
to the Empowerment 21
Şaban Kardaş
Part II The Ethno-Secular Geopolitical Space in
the Middle East
3 Understanding “Foreign Policy” of the PYD/YPG as a
Non-State Actor in Syria and Beyond 43
Berkan Öğür and Zana Baykal
v
vi CONTENTS
4 The Kurdish Fight Against ISIS: Realizing the Virtual
Kurdistan Through Factionalized
Politics in a Fragmented Homeland 77
Galip Dalay
5 Global Politics of Image and the Making of a
Legitimate Non-state Armed Actor: Syrian
Kurds and ‘The Secular West’ in Kobane 97
Tuncay Kardaş and Murat Yeşiltaş
Part III The Rise of Sacred Political Space in
the Middle East
6 Path to Become a State: From Jama’at Al-Tawhid Wal-
Jihad to the Islamic State 121
Ömer Behram Özdemir and Recep Tayyip Gürler
7 The New Middle East, ISIL and the 6th Revolt Against
the West 147
Murat Yeşiltaş and Tuncay Kardaş
8 An Influential Non-state Armed Actor in the Iraqi
Context: Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi and the Implications
of its Rising Influence 169
Bilgay Duman and Göktuğ Sönmez
Part IV New Methods in Old Bottles: The Strategy
of Non-State Armed Actors in the Middle East
9 Operationalizing the Vision of Building a New
Caliphate: From Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State (IS) 191
Farhad Rezaei
10 The Making of European Foreign Fighters: Identity,
Social Media and Virtual Radicalization 213
Tuncay Kardaş and Ömer Behram Özdemir
CONTENTS vii
11 What the ISIS Crisis Means for the Future of
the Middle East 237
Burak Kadercan
12 Conclusion: The State of the Non-state Armed
Actors in the Middle East 261
Murat Yeşiltaş and Tuncay Kardaş
Index 269
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 3.1 Formation of PYD/YPG 51
Fig. 5.1 Map built with guns. 105
ix
L t
ist of abLes
Table 2.1 Pathways to the empowerment of NSAAs 28
Table 8.1 The groups according to their size under the umbrella
of the Hashd 175
xi
e C
ditors and ontributors
about the editors
Murat Yeşiltaş has completed his BA and MA at the Department of
International Relations of Sakarya University, in 2003 and 2009, respec-
tively. He earned his Ph.D. at the Department of Political Science and
International Relations at Marmara University in 2012. Yeşiltaş was a visit-
ing researcher at the Department of European Studies and International
Politics of Lanchester University between 2008 and 2009 and visiting
researcher at Virginia Tech’s Institute of Government and International
Affairs between 2010 and 2011. He served as an academic advisor for
Center for Strategic Studies (SAM) of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey
between 2012 and 2014. Currently, Yeşiltaş is an Associate Professor in
the Middle East Institute at Sakarya University. He also holds the posi-
tion of director of security studies at SETA Foundation, Ankara, Turkey.
Yeşiltaş current researches are on critical geopolitics, ethnic/religious radi-
calization, geopolitics of non-state conflicts, terrorism, and the Kurdish
affairs. He is currently working on the following research projects: Kurdish
Geopolitical Space: Remaking of the Kurdish Political Subjectivity and the
New Kurdish Geopolitical Imagination; the New Regional Security Project
(NRSP). His most recent books are Türkiye Dünyanın Neresinde?Hayali
Coğrafyalar Çarpışan Anlatılar (Where is Turkey Located? Imagined
Geographies, Competing Narratives) (2015, Koc University Press) and
Geopolitical Mentality and the Military in Turkey (2016, Kadim).
xiii