Limits of Supranational Justice
The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict

A rich and gripping account of the challenges of transnational legal mobilization against an authoritarian regime engaged in state violence.

Dilek Kurban (Author)

9781108489324, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 November 2020

300 pages
24 x 16 x 3.5 cm, 1.1 kg

'Dr Kurban's rich empirical study documents the struggles of domestic Kurdish legal rights activists to mobilize the European Court of Human Rights, as well as on the ground to challenge the injustices of a violently repressive Turkish state. The historically contextualized qualitative research is masterfully executed, the book is very well written, and the multi-disciplinary analysis of both creative bottom-up mobilization and restrained top-down judicial effectiveness is compelling. Kurban's book is a major addition to research on legal mobilization by subaltern populations in authoritarian regimes.' Michael McCann, Gordon Hirabayashi Professor for the Advancement of Citizenship, University of Washington

With its contextualized analysis of the European Court of Human Rights' (ECtHR) engagement in Turkey's Kurdish conflict since the early 1990s, Limits of Supranational Justice makes a much-needed contribution to scholarships on supranational courts and legal mobilization. Based on a socio-legal account of the efforts of Kurdish lawyers in mobilizing the ECtHR on behalf of abducted, executed, tortured and displaced civilians under emergency rule, and a doctrinal legal analysis of the ECtHR's jurisprudence in these cases, this book powerfully demonstrates the Strasbourg court's failure to end gross violations in the Kurdish region. It brings together legal, political, sociological and historical narratives, and highlights the factors enabling the perpetuation of state violence and political repression against the Kurds. The effectiveness of supranational courts can best be assessed in hard cases such as Turkey, and this book demonstrates the need for a reappraisal of current academic and jurisprudential approaches to authoritarian regimes.

1. Introduction
Part I. Historical Background: 2. Turkey under European watch: lip service to democracy and human rights
3. The Kurdish question in historical context
4. The actors, acts and victims of state violence
Part II. Kurdish Legal Mobilization against State Violence: 5. From grassroots to transnational: Kurdish legal mobilization before the ECtHR
6. The ECtHR's legacy on the Kurdish conflict
7. Conclusion
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], Comparative politics [JPB], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP]