The Shiite jihad in Syrian civil war: The Shiite militias from Hezbollah to Hashd al-Shabi

The protests that started peacefully in Syria in 2011 turned into armed clashes due to the regime's violent practices. With the beginning of the conflicts, many foreign terrorist fighters flocked to Syria to stand with or against the Assad regime in line with their beliefs and ideology. Considering the profile of foreign terrorist fighters coming to Syria, there is an unprecedented movement of Shiite fighters. These Shiite fighters have been drawn into the field with various incentives as an implementation of Iran's strategy of using proxy force and have sided with the regime forces. The main discourse used to attract "voluntary" Shia militants recruited from the Shia population in different countries, especially Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, is the guarding of holy places for the Shiites in Syria. In this context, Shia militia forces participated in the conflicts by acting with religious motivation as a result of the propaganda carried out by making use of narratives such as the Karbala incident in Shia history. They described their presence here as jihad. However, in the media and terrorism studies, more focus has been on Salafi-jihadist movements and the Shia-jihadist movement has remained in the background. In this thesis study; It is aimed to examine the Shiite-jihadist militia groups in Syria in the context of religiously motivated terrorism, to reveal the future of these groups, possible scenarios and threats that may occur after the conflict.