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Providing a novel, ground-up perspective on the Kurdish Freedom Movement’s revolutionary struggle, this book explores supporters’ political commitments and practices in Turkish, Iraqi, and Syrian Kurdistan as well as in the German diaspora. Binding the movement together across all these sites, it argues, is a common obligation to the movement’s martyrs, which guides and shapes the struggle in various ways. Through complex relations between the living and the dead, the book contends that the movement’s political structure should be seen as founded on a social order of sacrifice.
This is one of the finest books ever written on the PKK and is one of the best books I have had the pleasure of reading in years. It is a deeply thought-provoking book that leads the reader to reconsider their own conclusions on the movement and on martyrdom more broadly. Francis O’Connor, European University Institute
This book is academically rigorous and empirically extremely rich. I not only enjoyed reading it, but I also learned a lot. This is a masterpiece about the martyrdom, but it goes beyond martyrdom as it tells the reader what the PKK is from A to Z. Kamal Chomani, Kurdish Peace Institute
Axel Rudi is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has published on sacrifice, sovereignty, egalitarianism and conspiracy among other topics. He has published extensively in journals such as History and Anthropology, Focaal, and Social Analysis.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Preface: Born to Die
Introduction. The Kurdish Revolution: Martyrs and All Meaningful Unities
Chapter 1. Erasure and Immortality: Turkish State Violence and the Development of the PKK’s Martyrdom
Chapter 2. Martyrial Democracy: An Anatomy of the Kurdish Movement in Wan
Chapter 3. Every Martyr Is a Philosopher of Life: Merging Guerillas and Civilians in Mexmûr’s New Life
Chapter 4. (Re)producing the New Time: PKK’s Newroz and Its Eternal Kawas
Chapter 5. Death by the State, Martyrdom by the PKK: A Social Order of Sacrifice
Chapter 6. Martyrs Beyond the Party: Transforming the Struggle in the German Diaspora
Conclusion. We Don’t Pray for the Martyrs: Grappling with Revolutionary Belief in Northeastern Syria
References
Index