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5 - Bottom-up

Kurdish Legal Mobilization at the ECtHR

from Part II - Kurdish Lawyers, the Turkish State and the ECtHR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2020

Dilek Kurban
Affiliation:
The Hertie School
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Summary

Until the ECtHR entered the picture, Turkey’s legal landscape lacked the basic ingredients for access to justice. Justiciable rights were subject to significant restrictions, the judiciary was unreceptive to rights claims, and civil society was weak and disorganised. Without funding, rights-advocacy organisations or pro bono legal assistance, human rights victims lacked access to a support structure. Once Turkey recognised the ECtHR’s oversight, Kurdish lawyers mobilised owing to their historically embedded rights consciousness, relatively high level of organisation and resistance experience, and the sheer scale and density of state violence. They became the top litigant group in Strasbourg in terms of the number of petitions they filed and the precedent-setting judgements they won. Based on in-depth interviews, this chapter accounts how Kurdish lawyers have mobilised the ECtHR to resist state violence in an emergency context. It shows the complex ways in which Turkey’s recognition of the right of individual petition and efforts to accede to the EU, and the ECtHR’s post-enlargement reforms have affected and been affected by Kurdish legal mobilisation since the early 1990s.

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Chapter
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Limits of Supranational Justice
The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict
, pp. 185 - 229
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Bottom-up
  • Dilek Kurban
  • Book: Limits of Supranational Justice
  • Online publication: 30 October 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108776585.007
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  • Bottom-up
  • Dilek Kurban
  • Book: Limits of Supranational Justice
  • Online publication: 30 October 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108776585.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Bottom-up
  • Dilek Kurban
  • Book: Limits of Supranational Justice
  • Online publication: 30 October 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108776585.007
Available formats
×