Terror and Narrative: PKK’s Stories of Dead Terrorists

30.06.2023 | Zafer YILMAZ , Ahmet GÜVEN

Terrorist groups use narratives to legitimize their actions, recruit new members and gain support from sympathizers. Narratives are powerful tools for terrorist organizations because they can help shape people's beliefs and perceptions about the world and can be used to justify acts of violence in the name of a supposedly greater cause or ideology. Terrorist organizations develop narratives that appeal to feelings of victimization, oppression or injustice, and these narratives can be functional in recruiting individuals who feel marginalized or disenfranchised. In this study, the stories of dead terrorists published by the separatist terrorist organization PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan - Kurdistan Workers’ Party) in the European newspaper Yeni Özgür Politika in December 2022, which coincided with the period when the PKK suffered great losses during Operation Claw-Lock, were examined with multiple content analysis methods by making use of the knowledge of narrative research. The stories were subjected to dialogic - performative, structural, thematic and referential analyses, and the world of meaning embodied in the PKK’s narratives was interpreted. It is argued that the interpretation of terrorist narratives, in the case of the PKK, will make a significant contribution to understanding the "cultural toolbox" of the terrorist organization.

Yılmaz, Z. ve Güven, A. (2023). Terror and Narrative: PKK’s Stories of Dead Terrorists. Journal of Terrorism and Radicalization Studies, 2(2), pp.313-331, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.29228/trad.33