The borders of the modern nation-states of Turkey and Iran cut across and separate predominantly Kurdish-populated territories from each other. Yet, Kurdish populations in each side of the border have sustained close political and social relations as well as trade networks, even though these relations require illegal border crossings by people and things. Kurdish border-traders (i.e. “smugglers”), therefore, view legitimacy of this border-trade differently from the state authorities. Following this illegal but licit border-trade, the paper detaches the question of morality from the question of legality, and situates it in a complex web of politico-economic and cultural interactions. Drawing on my 18 month-long ethnographic research in Van, a predominantly Kurdish-populated border province of Turkey, I examine different politico-moral and economic framings that Kurdish traders construct to justify the illegal border-trade. Referring to poverty and unemployment as side-effects of underdevelopment, three-decade long war between the state and Kurdish guerillas, or even the 2011 Van earthquake, some traders frame smuggling as the only means of livelihood available to them. Some traders also formulate smuggling as a form of wealth re-distribution providing mass consumption items –-such as diesel fuel, cigarettes, or table sugar– to the needy in fair prices. Other traders consider smuggling as justifiable tax evasion and ‘fiscal disobedience.’ While some of them question the morality of paying taxes to the Turkish state, which is not believed to serve but oppress its citizens, others deny the sovereignty claims of Turkey and Iran on Kurdistan at all. In my analysis, I first discuss strategic construction and use of ‘the State vs. Kurds’ dichotomy in politico-moral framings of the border-trade. Although this dichotomy appears as a fixed anchor in each framing, I show how its actual content and circulation vary as a floating signifier. Secondly, I discuss how the objects involved in the border-trade –namely, material qualities of the trade items, transportation technologies, and the money that traders invest and/or generate– influence the construction of these politico-moral framings and also customize ‘the State vs. Kurds’ dichotomy in concrete life situations. Instead of identifying a preconceived and single logic behind the moral economy of the Kurdish border-trade, I identify multiple politico-economic and cultural references and logics. Additionally, I also depict ‘the State vs. Kurds’ dichotomy as a shifting construct that requires daily maintenance, rather than a fixed analytical dichotomy that predominates in recent studies on the Kurds and Kurdistan.