Socıal Characterıstıcs for Mılıtancy: The Case of Turkısh Hezbollah

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the social characteristics of the Turkish Hezbollah members at the recruitment level and the impacts of those characteristics in engaging in violent activities. Through using individual level data the underlying social characteristics that are influential in a TH member’s deployment (or choice) into military wing for violent activities or into political activities are identified. These include knowing the characteristics that where Turkish Hezbollah members come from, what motivates them towards Hezbollah’s ideology, their family background, and their demographics.
This study mainly found that individual characteristics that are considered determinative for an individual to engage in terrorist activity are not much different for Turkish Hezbollah. In that most of the social characteristics of age, marital status, economic status, whether moved from hometown, lifestyle of members before organization, and crime history have similar effect with the generic sense of the related literature of average terrorist in the Middle East. In terms of the individual and collective impact of the social characteristics into the dichotomous deployment of military vs. political wing within the TH, this study found that age, marital status, economic status, whether moved from hometown, lifestyle of members before organization, and crime history have same effect in opting for (or being deployed) military vs. political wing positions in the organization at both, individual and collective level. In that, TH members are either choose or be intentionally/deliberately deployed into political and military wings of the TH based on certain social characteristics of younger age, in unmarried status, with lower educational attainment, with lower level work and in turn economic status.