This paper studies the relationship between political violence and social movement in the Kurdish region of Turkey. The work is founded on profound empirical data on radical groups, particularly the PKK from 1973 to nowadays as well as some local Kurdish regions. Current mobilization theories tend to see violence as an unproblematic extension of social movements, or as post-processes of political and popular mobilizations. This study takes into account organizational, cultural and structural dynamics of violence as suggested by these theories. However, it puts the use of political violence in the center of analysis. On the one hand, the study contextualizes Kurdist political violence in large historical situations, and political institutions. On the other hand, it shows that the use of violence by radical groups produces new historical processes, crises, group formations, ethnic identities, intra-ethnic divisions, political institutions and mobilizations both at macro and micro levels in the Kurdish context. For that reason, the paper analyzes the interactions and disconnections between mobilization and deployment of radical violence that current social movement theories do not put in the center of their analyses: partisan conflicts, guerilla warfare, low intensity conflict, counter guerilla activities, prison insurgencies, street riots, tribal wars, destruction of lands, self sacrificial violence (suicide attacks and immolations), armed propaganda, and agitation.
