Claiming the Dead: Kurdish Funerary Mobilisation and Mortuary Control in Iran

How have Iranian state institutions governed the visibility of Kurdish political death, and how do different forms of visibility shape the available pathways of funerary and commemorative mobilisation? This source-bounded documentary study examines a purposive sixteen-case mortuary-constraint series including one actor-unknown borderline record from the 2022–23 Jîna uprising, six separately assembled illustrative public-funeral narratives, and a maximum-variation historical contrast set. It analyses corporeal, informational, ritual, spatial, temporal and classificatory visibility as non-exclusive dimensions rather than a single scale. Across the material, bodies, names, dates, graves, rituals and official classifications appear as differently available, restricted or contested anchors of political mourning. The contemporary series documents heterogeneous constraints around custody, release and interment, while later commemorative activity remains visible in ten of the sixteen cases; these patterns are selection-conditioned and do not estimate prevalence or causal effect. Historical contrasts identify coexisting configurations of publicity, bodily exposure, concealment, conditional access and jurisdictionally displaced aftermaths rather than a linear evolution. The article distinguishes funerary, commemorative and justice-seeking pathways and separates documented events, documented prevention, searched non-findings and uncertainty. This is version 1.0 of a preprint. It has not undergone peer review. The deposit contains the article and its case-level public-source appendix (Appendix A); the underlying search log, case matrices, quotation audit, historical visibility register and casualty-reconciliation workbook are retained as author working files and are not deposited. No raw social-media material or account-level identifier is included.