Investigating the role of Kurds and al-Qaeda in the Syrian crisis from a structural-agent perspective

In the Middle East region, due to the artificial borders resulting from the agreements of the early 20th century and the ethnic fluidity in the borders of the countries, the so-called conflict has caused controversy between geopolitical fields, which together contain geopolitical structures and agents, and geopolitical entropy have created in the region. Following the developments of the Arab world and the geopolitical anarchy in Syria, two essential actors, the Kurds and AlQaeda (Al-Nusra Front) in this country, as geopolitical agents, have defined their geopolitical codes and vision that have influenced the ruling structures. The Kurds and Al-Qaeda have created pseudostates that, through formulating and articulating geopolitical discourses, are trying to enter the field of geopolitical agency in order to act in geopolitical fields. This research aims to examine the role of the Kurds and Al-Qaeda from the perspective of the structure-agent dialectic through the scientific method by studying documents and in-depth interviews with experts in the Syrian crisis. The researcher, the statistical community of the research, has included two groups of experts from Syria and advisors of the Islamic Republic in Syria as an expert group, and experts in the country's security, political, and academic research sectors, approximately 80 people in the expert group. The type of research is applied, and its method is descriptiveanalytical with a mixed approach. The results of this research confirm that the religious discourse of Al-Qaeda and the ethnic discourse of the Kurds in Syria have turned into a geopolitical discourse, and these two agents have territorial ambitions. In other words, religion, ethnicity, and geopolitics are intertwined in the Syrian crisis.