Çelik, Adnan
States, tribes, Islam: The Hebizbinî and tribal involvement in radical Islam in Kurdistan, Turkey
- 2023.
26
The “Kurdish” Hizbullah was founded in 1979 in the south-east of Turkey: it benefitted from the financial support of Ankara to conservative Islamist movements in the context of the anti-communist and anti-Kurdish struggle of the 1950s to the 1980s and, then, in the context of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis. The “Kurdish” Hizbullah can be considered an avatar of radical Islamist movements because of its violence, its mobilization of the youth, its willingness to hegemony over social life and, its relationship with state paramilitary forces. Hizbullah is also an example of the complex relationship between tribes, religion and state in a situation of stasis. During the war between the Kurdish movement and the Turkish state, especially at its peak in the 1990s, the vast majority of tribes were split because of the commitment of their members to opposite sides of the conflict. In this configuration, the case of the Hebizbinî tribe, unanimously considered as pro-Hizbullah, stands out. This article examines the Hebizbini tribe's adherence to the Islamist group Hizbullah and analyzes it as a phenomenon of successful conversion, in a context of the situation-limite and radical disruption of the clan 'asabiyya into da'wa (solidarity cemented by common adherence to a political or ideological cause).