From Radicalism and Extremism to Terrorism: The Instrumentalization of Political Violence

After 9/11 attacks, discussions on the efficiency of global struggle against terrorist groups forced governments to seek new strategies in counterterrorism. In many terrorism studies, researchers tried to find answers to those questions, “how and why individuals are radicalised?” and “why people use violence and terrorism?” During this period, terms of radicalism and extremism have caught the attention of researchers in terrorism studies. The ambiguous situation in traditional discussions on the definitions of terrorism has been reflected in the studies on radicalism. In this article, we aim to make a descriptive analysis about radicalism, extremism and terrorism; to reveal relations among the related terms; to examine in which situations individuals and groups use and instrumentalize violence. Within this context, we handled firstly radicalism and related terms, historical perspective and different approaches on radicalism. Finally, we tried to explain how violence was adopted through the process in which radical thoughts and actions were converted into extremism and terrorism