Contagion effect of the Syrian civil war: Comparative analysis of Turkey and Lebanon

This thesis comparatively analyzes how the Syrian civil war has affected Turkey and Lebanon. This impact is attempted to be determined within the framework of theoretical studies that examine the contagion effect of intra-state conflicts to neighboring countries/regions. The thesis is based on several basic assumptions. The first one is that the crisis in Syria, which started in March 2011, turned into a civil war over time. Secondly, it is claimed that the Syrian civil war has had a contagion effect outside the country and that this contagion effect has emerged primarily in two neighboring countries, Turkey and Lebanon. In this context, this thesis aims to evaluate the transnationalization of the Syrian civil war and the extent to which it has spilled over to Turkey and Lebanon through a theoretical framework derived from the literature on the contagion of civil wars. In this context, the study first examines the literature on civil wars and analyzes the definition of civil war, its actors and how it is handled in the context of international relations theories. Secondly, the literature on the contagion effects of civil wars is analyzed. In this section, the factors that cause the spread of civil wars and determine the degree of spread are presented. In this context, it is argued that civil wars have a contagion effect depending on the factors stemming from the size of the interaction between the source country, the target country and the source and target countries and that the target countries are affected by civil wars depending on these factors. The effects of civil wars outside the country are categorized into three categories: mass migration-related effects, security-related effects and economic effects. In the case study part of the thesis, the Syrian Civil War was analyzed. In this context, the historical context of the social opposition in Syria was analyzed in order to understand the process leading to the crisis in Syria and the causes of the civil war. Following this, the emergence and development of the civil war in Syria and the processes in which it had a contagion effect were analyzed. In this section, the claim that the crisis in Syria is a civil war is tried to be verified. In the next section, the main problematic of this thesis, the contagion effects of the Syrian Civil War on Turkey and Lebanon are analyzed. In this section, it has been tried to reveal that the Syrian civil war has created mass migration-related effects, security-related effects and economic effects in Turkey and Lebanon, which are neighboring countries within the framework of contagion effects. KEYWORDS: Civil War, Contagion Effect of Civil Wars, Syrian Civil war, Turkey, Lebanon