ABSTRACT
This chapter provides repertoires of political violence in the Kurdish movement. There are several repertoires of violence and collective actions in the Kurdish conflict which also include civilian disobedience, demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, legal assemblies and the like. The chapter focuses mainly on two repertoires: Kurdish insurgencies and self-sacrificial violence. The chapter explores insurgencies called serhildan by Kurdish participants, it signifies troubles, popular assemblies including a multiplicity of violent actions - their possible outcomes are death, injury and physical damage - and can be defined as popular and local movements which precede or succeed armed struggle. The three ideal types of self-sacrificial action, which are fasting to death, self-immolation and suicide attack. The chapter goals to draw common points and differences which taken into account in the study of self-sacrificial violence. The chapter provides some hypotheses to explain the emergence of self-sacrificial violence, namely, mortification of the self, charisma of the leader of the PKK, militant habitus and politics of violence.
