EUI - The Discourse of Death in PKK´s Ideology

The Discourse of Death in the PKK’s Ideology: A Journey to Fathom Political Violence and Fascination for Death Emdjed Kurdnidjad, PhD researcher at the European University Institute Keywords: Fascination for death, Hegemonic Whisper, Kurdayeti, PKK , Kurds In this research it is argued that “PKK is not simply militarizing the Kurdish movement, but Kurdistan is also Kurdifying PKK” as I elaborate how the Kurdish culture is vital to understand PKK. I have studied how fascination for death (F.D.) is so central in a Marxist organization like PKK (research question). However for Olivier Roy (2017), who has created the concept, F.D. is about terrorizing the politics and having a nihilist/apocalyptic approach as the essence of F.D. (a desire to end the world), but F.D. in my research, which is the core of “the discourse of death in PKK’s ideology”, manifests that under special social and cultural circumstances one conducts actions that aims to kill herself in shape of suicide bombing, self-immolation, hunger strikes etc. in order to achieve political goals or make political impacts, thus, F.D. might be a rational political action too rather than terrorizing the politics. Theoretically, I develop The Sociology of Death into devoting attention to the discourse of death as a part of our social and political lives. In this regard, I have presented two concepts: kurdayeti and Hegemonic Whisper. Kurdayeti, that literally means Kurdishness, is a new concept in Kurdish language through which the Kurds internalize the will/desire of Kurdish society to survive. Hegemonic Whisper is a bad feeling that the Kurds constantly feel in Kurdish society, like a background music or a whisper that the Kurds constantly hear, which indicates that something is wrong in Kurdish society, something should be done and something should change. Methodologically, I elaborated PKK’s ideology in three levels: 1. Through selected books allegedly authored by Abdullah Ocalan , 2. Through influential cultural aspects/codes of Kurdish society (such as influential literary works, widespread songs, and Kurdish cultural concepts), 3. Through interviewing 18 ex-fighters of PKK from all main parts of Kurdistan in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, including two ethnically Italian fighters (I met them in different countries such as Norway, Italy, Germany and Bashur (Kurdistan of Iraq)). Moreover, one of the unique aspects of my research is that I also benefit from my own life experiences in Kurdistan. I have also focused on the international aspects of PKK to go beyond methodological nationalism and avoid reducing PKK to Turkish Studies that often happens in the existing literature about PKK. In this regard more than half of my interlocutors (informants) are not from Turkey.

Ny forståelse av nasjonalisme

This study will attempt to explore a new cultural perception of death in a world we are so sure death is something terrible i.e. this project will study the discourse of death in a radical liberation movement. My project will bridge the gap between PKK studies and the sociology of death. I will explicate how death is understood in the PKK/PYD’s ideology, then, showing how distinguished this is from the perceptions of death presented in the sociology of death so far. My theoretical framework will be Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory since this is so well developed to understand cultural and political constructions, besides I continue developing my own concepts within discourse theory: Hegemonic Whisper and Collective Dream.