How do terrorist organizations persuade their members to become suicide bombers?
The method used by many organizations is exclusion.
For example, imagine you joined PKK, ISIS or a similar organization. Your social circle has suddenly completely changed. You can no longer see your family, you can no longer contact friends from your previous life, you can no longer do the things you used to do and enjoy. You were born into a completely different life and you are alone.
Add to this the fact that you believe that you have embarked on an irreversible path with your brain, which has been washed since childhood, and that you think that humanity will reach the ideal world at the end of this path. Oh, and if you try to return to your old life, at best you will go to prison, or if you fail, the organization may execute you.
Now put yourself in this idiot’s shoes. You are in the clutches of an organization, your spouse, your friend, your family, your home, the streets you know, the places you go, the faces you are familiar with are no longer around you. You are alone in a cave at the top of an unknown mountain or in a cell house in the city with people you do not know and who are now your whole world. Since these people are not such innocent, good-hearted, peace-loving people, they are capable of all kinds of tricks.
So, you entered the organization, you have a slightly weak character and this feature of yours was discovered by the managers of the organization. Congratulations, you are a candidate to become a suicide bomber (human resources will contact you as soon as possible). Since the things to be done and the protocols to be followed in this process have been rehearsed hundreds of times in advance, you are now a little mouse caught in a psychological experiment, a manipulation that will end in death.
How Does? If we leave aside the ideological training (brainwashing sessions) that the organization constantly gives you in line with its own ideology, as I mentioned above: you suddenly became among people who were your whole world and whom you had never known before, and your communication with the outside world was cut off. Some of those people will treat you well, but these will generally be low-ranking, unimportant people, and high-ranking important people will directly ignore you and give you meaningless, stupid tasks; No matter what you do, you will feel like no one takes you for granted. You will see that you are a janitor, an office boy on this path you set out to become a liberation warrior or God’s sword on earth. No matter what you do in the intervening months and years, this will not change; you will always be busy with the same meaningless, boring, and unhelpful tasks, always busy with drudgery. You will see that those who join the organization after you take on more responsibilities than you, are appointed to more important positions, and achieve greater things. Their contribution to the “cause” will be much greater than yours. If they don’t hold back a little longer, they will already make a revolution, they are such great men. Well, you are not an idle man, there is a revolutionary inside you that no one can understand or see, you did not join this cause to peel potatoes or sweep a cave, you must do something, you are deeply consumed by this problem.
that you have been of no use in the past, that you have never been a hero, a warrior, a brave man, as you thought, even though you left your whole life behind; You will find that you are never appreciated and are of no use. Since this process will take months and you are already exposed to such manipulation while having a psychologically weak character, it will not be very difficult for them to play with you like play dough.
In the past, we see how the people we called suicide bombers, whom they referred to as “freedom fighters”, “walking C4”, “brown bombs” or similar fancy words, were praised within the organization, how much respect they were given, how their memories have been kept alive for hundreds of billions of years, and how awesome they are. You will see that they are doing a job. You will gradually hear these suggestions from people who treated you well at first, but who are not at a very high rank. You will also be fascinated by the respect shown to those who joined much later than you and later decided to become suicide bombers.
As soon as you show that you are interested in this issue to your well-intentioned brothers who contacted you in the first place, you will suddenly be placed in the spotlight by those high-level organization managers and people who do not consider you a good person. You will be treated with respect and respect, I don’t know, the most beautiful corner in the cave will be given to you, you will switch from AK 47 to AK Type 81, etc.
Now imagine that a person who has been manipulated for months, as above, sees these privileges, respect, respect, and being treated like a man, which seem ridiculous to us, and which I even described with fun. It will suddenly be like flying on clouds.
Anyway, you were suddenly promoted from the rank of sewer rat to the rank of marshal and your life is very good now. You have now become a patriotic revolutionary comrade or a lion mujahid, you are the chosen one who will save your nation or your religious brothers from the suffering they have suffered for thousands of years. You now experience that feeling of usefulness that you were looking for in the first place, you are made to feel that you are a great man, and it is frequently explained and expressed how important you and the action you are implicitly planning to take are for the organization. You also get it into your head that if you do not take this action, if it were not for you, the organization would fall to pieces, and that this organization, which was created by shedding the blood of hundreds of revolutionaries/mujahideen, will continue thanks to you.
You can no longer leave the life you are used to above. When you think about quitting or make yourself feel this in some way, suddenly all the privileges you had, the respect shown to you etc. disappear and you end up in a worse position than before.
They tell a lot of things, you believe that you will have your name written in platinum on the surface of Mars, let alone having your name written in gold letters in the history of the world, your poor mother in the village and your farmer father will also be proud of you; Besides, the organization will look after them too, isn’t that bad? Oh, and the children who were left fatherless due to the events in Diyarbakır Prison 45 years ago will also be avenged; If you are in an Islamic organization, heaven, houris, lights, things, you are the king, my son.
Then, whether they wear the bombs with a vest or inject dynamite into your body through the anus, as I said, it depends on the sect of the organization. They will also give you a detonator (my English is good too, sorry to say that), but just in case, a talented brother of yours watches you from afar and if you cannot do it, he will press the button and you will race with Elon Musk’s vehicles as you go into space.