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Suicide bombing and martyrdom are frequently associated with the religious violence perpetrated by Islamist groups. When in September 2014 a female suicide bomber of the Kurdish YPJ (Women’s Protection Units) blew herself up amongst IS-fighters in Kobane, the world was once again reminded that militant self-sacrifice is not the sole prerogative of fundamentalists (Al Jazeera 2014). Instead there have been numerous examples of secular and atheist organizations in the Middle East and elsewhere who use dying for a cause as a tactic. But how can people be motivated to go their deaths without any religious justifications for martyrdom or paradisiac rewards? Are those organizations really secular or are they religious with secular disguise? Bargu’s political ethnography of the struggle of leftist captives against the introduction of F-type Prisons in Turkey after the year 2000 provides an indepth look in the mindset of secularists who forge their lives into weapons. The aim of Starve and Immolate is, however, much more ambitious than merely documenting this contention. Instead, the goal is to develop a theory about the complex connections and entanglements of contemporary forms of sovereignty and resistance. In October 2000, several hundred political prisoners in Turkey went on a hunger strike in protest against the government’s plan to send them to high security prisons, where they would be subjected to cellular imprisonment. Previously the prisoners had lived together in large wards in which they could organize a political life in communes. They saw the introduction of new prisons as an attack on their organization and feared that the isolation in the new cells would be equivalent to the torture of solitary confinement. As the Turkish government showed no signs of conceding to any of their demands, the captives intensified their protest by announcing a “death fast.” Should the government not revoke its decision, the prisoners would collectively starve themselves to death. On the 61st day of the death fast on December 19, 2000 the authorities assumed that the prisoners were on the brink of death and decided to launch the “Operation Return to Life.” Ironically, it did not save any lives but led to the death of 30 captives who resisted their forcible transfer and were killed by security forces or took their own life in protest. Furthermore, the event escalated the confrontation. In certain intervals new teams of volunteers joined the hunger strike until death. Through the consumption of sugar, salt, water, and vitamin supplements during the fast they could extend their

Starve and immolate: The politics of human weapons