Violent Extremism in Terrorist Organizations: The Case of Turkish Hizbullah

Perception about terrorism over the globe has drastically shifted after 9/11. The U.S centered “war on terrorism” approach dominates strategies in countering terrorism exploiting religion. It appears that the war on terrorism approach has brought enormous extent of unintended consequences and eased radicalization process. To generate a better strategy, research played a key role in countering terrorist group exploiting religious. In that sense, this paper aims to explore the relationship between the micro-level factors and involvement in violent acts in the Turkish Hizbullah, the notorious terrorist organization exploiting religion in Turkey. The biographies of 1500 Hizbullah members were the main data source. After a content analysis, biographies were coded in numbers and a data set was created. Logistic regression was conducted on this data set to predict the factors associated with violence. Results showed that age at time of joining the organization, number of years in the organization and unemployment significantly predict Turkish Hizbullah members who involve in violent acts.