Document Type : Research Paper
Abstract
Following the set of movements called 'Arab Spring' which surrounded most of the Middle East and North African countries, Syria also threw into crises. Most analysis concentrated on the competition of big international and geopolitical powers in this crisis. Although the foreign variable plays a very influential role, the role played by the internal factors should not be also ignored. Therefore, this study is an attempt to put the issue in the following question: what is the effect of the internal factors in continuation and entrenchment of the Syrian crisis? To answer this question, the authors tried to evaluate the following hypothesis using the discourse analysis methodology of Laclau and Mouffe: the manner of structuring the conflicting discourses is the sign of their in-depth differences in such a way that it has made a minimal common denominator of the Syrian future impossible, as the main reason of its continuation and deepening. Based on factors like discursive cohesion and influential strength, three discourses of 'Ba'ath', 'Takfiri-Jihadi' and 'the Kurds self-rule model' were chosen among many others. Surveying on the signs of each discourse seems essential to explain the relations between Syrian crisis and the mentality of the players involved. Therefore, through studying the ways of arranging the chains of equivalent of various discourses, this study tries to explicate the reasons for the continuation and deepening of the crisis from the viewpoint of discursive conflict of internal factors as one of its two main crisis bases.
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