• Acta Via Serica
• /
• v.7 no.1
• /
• pp.105-130
• /
• 2022

This paper argues that the war in Syria is partly the result of a global Islamist wave that contributed to fuelling conflict across large regions of Asia and Africa. Of course, the war that has consumed Syria since 2011 most certainly has multiple interrelated causes and driving forces, and any attempt to isolate one or even two or three runs the risk of advancing an overly simplistic interpretation of history. This essay, therefore, does not aim to offer an appraisal of the multiple variables that contributed to the war in Syria. Instead, it zeroes in on how political Islam came to impact Syria and its people. In doing so, it demonstrates how competing varieties of political Islam represented leading causes of conflict. Indeed, different Islamist movements contributed to the outbreak of the war in 2011, fuelled the conflict for years on end, and to this day represent major obstacles to the achievement of sustainable peace. Four broad Islamist currents are especially relevant to the case of Syria: the Muslim Brotherhood; the Shia revivalist movement at the nexus of the alliance between Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria; Salafi jihadism and its volatile and fractious underworld of competing armed groups, from Al-Qaeda to the Islamic State; and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's market-friendly Islamism, which induced Turkey to intervene in Syria's civil war.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.175-183
• /
• 2022

This study comparatively analyzed the cultural codes of Korea and Turkey represented in the Turkish film remaking the Korean original film. Although both films follow the narrative of resisting the tyranny of public power based on fatherly love, similarities and differences were revealed depending on the socio-cultural contexts of Korea and Turkey. First of all, Korea and Turkey valued familialism under the influence of Confucianism and Islam respectively. This was represented as a fatherly love, willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of his daughter. Meanwhile, in the Turkish version, there was a difference in the interpretation of the Islamic identity that encompasses the lives of Turkish people and the consequent human sinfulness and death. In the film, the prisoners repented of their personal sinfulness under Islamic doctrine, and sought salvation by activating the muslim brotherhood. This contrasts with the original work, which uses religion as a humor element that highlights the genre characteristics of comedy films, along with the social atmosphere in Korea that allows for the coexistence of various religions. In addition, Turkish one draws on the realistic issues of the military dictatorship of Turkey in the 1980s and the abolition of the death penalty for EU membership, bringing out a film narrative as a drama genre.