15 August 2012
France 24
Dr Phillips talked to France 24 about his recent research trip to the Turkish-Syrian border. From interviews with Syrian refugees on the border he found that the vast majority are resisting defining the civil war as a sectarian calling for a pluralist democratic state after President Assad falls, where different sects can live side by side. He found that a small minority do hold more extreme sectarian views and blame Assad’s Alawi sect for the whole of the regime’s brutality.
