Key to Defeating the Islamic State -Create a New Sunni State

[palandio]

Alawites and Alawites? Do you mean Alawites and Maronites?

What can be said is that the map posted by Adam Griffin is lumping together Alawites (mostly in Syria and the Turkish province of Hatay, a small number in northern Lebanon), Alevis (mostly in Turkey) and orthodox Twelver Shia Muslims (in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and some Syrian towns like Nubl and al-Fuah). The Alawites of Latakia and Tartus are different from Lebanese Shia Muslims. I would mention though that there are attempts by Hezbollah and Iran to introduce a more orthodox Shia Islam among Syrian Alawites.

[palandio]

[...]
If one [...] inspects the displacement map of refugees[/url], then it's a fairly safe assumption that [...] a good portion of these individuals are going to be from places like Homs, Hama, and so forth anyway (with the remainder - perhaps a majority - being displaced Sunnis).

I fear that you are misinterpreting the map. "Internally displaced by region" imho counts the number of internally displaced persons currently residing in the respective region (within Syria) and not the number of persons that have fled from there. (The map is not clear on this. In fact the map is quite bad not only because of its unclear legend but also because using shaded areas to display absolute numbers is a deathly sin.)

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On the contrary the province of Tartus and most of Latakia are among the "safest" places within Syria, if you are not an opposition activist. Many internally displaced Syrians are fleeing to Latakia, not because they love Assad, but because there is food, electricity and (almost) no bombs.

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Western Syria (if you mean the axis Aleppo-Idlib-Hama-Homs-Aleppo-Daraa) is the most densely populated part of Syria. Obvious that a good percentage of refugees stems from there.
From what I have read the majority of Syrian refugees is Sunni. The reason is that rebel and disputed territories have the worst living standard at the moment plus constant bombing and that most of these regions were almost exclusively Sunni Arab before the war (and still are, but much less populated).

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While I generally appreciate the effort put in the confessional distribution map, I think that the mapmakers have made a real mistake when in comes to the Alawites (the heterodox semi-Shia sect in Western Syria and the Turkish province of Hatay).
Firstly, the province of Hatay has been Turk-ized since its annexion to Turkey in 1939. Arab Alawites constitute an overall minority (and a majority in three small rural districts out of twelve districts.) The remaining population is majority Sunni (with a small Christian minority).
Secondly, most Syrian Alawites hate Erdogan and Erdogan hates Syrian Alawites. Why should Alawites have a preference for Turkey rather than multi-confessional Lebanon.

Edit: Sorry if some of the things that I wrote above come over as rude. Now that I am reading again what you have written, I think that many of your points are worth discussing. It's just that you are providing so many points for discussion at the same time and that I may have misunderstood some of them.