When does a Kurdish villager go to Turkish courts to make a right claim against the Turkish state? How does compensation paid by the state become legitimate (blood money) or illegitimate (bloody money)? This paper examines extra-legal ethical repertoires through which legitimacy of making right claims against the Turkish state is constructed in Van, a predominantly Kurdish-populated province on the Turkish-Iranian border. Through an ethnographic research among Kurdish litigants, their Kurdish lawyers, and mostly non-Kurdish, appointed judges and prosecutors, the paper depicts a particular legal consciousness –namely, contending visions of law, crime, and justice– among ordinary people as well as legal experts. The paper examines two categories of compensation cases: cases to compensate for village evacuations and cases to compensate for killing of smugglers by border patrols. Cases in the first category refer to a particular law: The Law on Compensation for Damage Arising from Terror and Combating Terror (law no. 5233). These cases, therefore, proceed smoothly, and result in compensation awards. The law, however, mobilizes terrorism discourse that significantly restricts the legitimacy of such right claims among pro-Kurdish activists. The cases in the second category do not refer to a specific compensation law and the courts usually reject those claims. In fact, as the fieldwork shows, the judges and prosecutors, who are appointed for a two years term, tend to identify smuggling activities with ‘terrorism’ by referring to the state’s recent anti-terrorism campaign that depicts the PKK –the pro-Kurdish armed organization– as a terrorist and an international crime/smuggling syndicate. Yet, for pro-Kurdish activists, these cases are seen as opportunities to prosecute disproportionate state violence. Besides the pro-Kurdish activist circles and state officers, the paper documents how individual Kurdish litigants can mobilize various extra-legal ethical references, such as family/tribe affiliation, village solidarity, social class position, or religious attachment (instead of Kurdish nationalism) to justify making a right claim to compensate for village evacuation or being given a state post in place of going to the court to compensate for a killing on the border. In providing a nuanced depiction of legal consciousness in the region, the paper aims to surpass the pro-state versus pro-Kurdish dichotomy that prevails in the studies on the Kurdish Question in Turkey.