The state of savagery: ISIS in Syria.

• Author: Ulutas, Ufuk
• Position: Book review

What is the ontology of ISIS? Ulutas takes this central question as the linchpin of his study in which he keeps a keen eye on the group's evolution, ranging from its historicalideological roots to its operational transformation and positioning toward other conflicting parties in the region. While placing the ISIS phenomenon into the framework of violent nonstate actors (VNSA), Ulutas discusses to what extent ISIS poses a challenge to the Westphalian system today. Dividing ISIS' development into two phases, he focuses on the second, namely on the turning point which highlights the group's expansion to Syrian soil.

Composing six chapters in total, Ulutas begins with questioning whether ISIS is a state or not. For this, he creates a theoretical framework in which discussing the ontology of non-state actors is prioritized. Ulutas embeds the scrutiny of their limits and ranges of influence into the evaluation of existing theories on non-state actors. Confronting different approaches at this point, Ulutas actually remains on the ontological path while explicating what VNSA are, their characteristics, their advantages, factors empowering them and so forth. Importantly, he notes that despite the dominant traditional realist paradigm that refuses any ascription of durable effectiveness to non-state actors, "the war against ISIS itself " waged by many states, makes it an "influential actor in the international system" (p. 39). At the end of this theoretical discussion, Ulutas concludes by referring to Lynch's suggestion that constructivism helps the most to understand ISIS because its ideology and identity shape and largely explain its behavior. Therefore, as Ulutas argues, acknowledging the impact of takfirism and messianism is indispensable in the examination of such a VNSA "that is on the border of holding qualities of a state in the Westphalian sense," though "the state in ISIS' mind... transcends borders of nationstates" (pp. 40-41).

Preluding ISIS' ideological "emancipation" from mainstream Salafi-jihadism, Ulutas briefly portrays key figures whose fault lines must be understood in order to delineate the transformation from ISI to ISIS. Critics may complain that Ulutas, similar to Fawaz Gerges, whose works he refers to several times, puts too much emphasis on jihadi leaders, for instance, when he characterizes each by a pseudonym which he uses as subtitles. In doing so, Ulutas labels Abdullah Azzam as "the original," Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi as...