Terrorism, narrative and culture: Dead terrorist stories in the PKK media

Terrorism, which is methods of solving backwardness, stumbling or distorted acceleration in the modernization process through political violence, is historical, social and cultural constructs that cannot fit into narrow or broad definitions. As a matter of fact, underneath the ideological or ethnic identitarian political discourses of the PKK terrorist organization, which have changed and transformed over time, there is an effort to counter the seemingly insecure and complex systematic of the modernization processes in Türkiye, as well as its tendency towards individualization, with acts of violence, which is a familiar problem-solving method for that community, in order to protect the traditional way of life that is assumed to be natural. This study examines the so-called heroic stories written after the death of terrorists, which have been the most consistent cultural production of the PKK terrorist organization since its establishment and the spiritual tool of organizational continuity. The stories, which are classified according to three historically successive periods of political discourse of the separatist organization PKK, are interpreted in a qualitative research design using performative, structural, thematic, referential and media analysis techniques. Drawing on constructionist and historicist assumptions, this study re-discusses the concepts of narrative and culture in the context of PKK terrorism. The study argues that the terrorist organization PKK oscillates in a pre-modernist mental universe and world of meaning, sandwiched between lineage and cause, corresponding to the asabiyya conceptualized by Ibn Khaldun.