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Paper short abstract:

This paper will present how sucide attack becomes a legitimate form of action for PKK members as a response to necropolitical practices of the Turkish state. It will show how their identities are fused from local to extended and the symbolic nature of violence contribute to this action.

Paper long abstract:

In order to understand the extent to which the Turkish state’s continuous military occupation have contributed to a rise in suicide attacks by members of the PKK, my study employs both qualitative and quantitative research, with a primary focus on obtaining direct testimony from members of the PKK.

Different forms of violence are one of the key contributions to identity fusion among members of the Kurdish Youth, from both direct and indirect experience in North Kurdistan. All this violence experience drive some of them to sacrifice themselves for their kinship and for their national kinship. When they join to the movement and been in the active war, they witness violence perpetrated against family members and friends which push them to change violence forms as a resistance against colonization. For them, suicide attack is the one most prestigious “honored death” to show their comrades.

To understand how this identity fusion occurs, Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics is utilised. Within this, Mbembe shows how colonial parts exercise and uniform control and acted upon dead bodies in order to control the living population. In doing, so they reinforce an identity between the living and the dead, which concurrently creates a sense of unified identity among the living. This paper reveals how this concept emerges in the data collected for this study.