Limits of Supranational Justice

This book tells the dramatic story of how ordinary Kurds and their lawyers tried to mobilize the European Court of Human Rights against state violence in Turkey. It meticulously documents the reasons behind their successes and failures, providing sobering conclusions on the limitations of supranational courts in dealing with authoritarian regimes.

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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.