Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ‘}’ surrounding a while

You’ve wrapped the opening and closing of the while in separate if statements. This is the structure of your code.

if( $term ) {
    // etc.
   while ( $loop->have_posts() ) :
}

// etc.

if( $term ) {
   endwhile;
}

This is not valid PHP. You need to structure it like this:

if( $term ) {
    // etc.
   while ( $loop->have_posts() ) :

   // etc.

   endwhile;
}

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