Limits of Supranational Justice

Dilek Kurban, a fellow and lecturer at the Hertie School and affiliated with the School's Centre for Fundamental Rights, analyses in her book the European Court of Human Rights' (ECtHR) engagement in Turkey's Kurdish conflict since the early 1990s. 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, her 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.

'Limits of Supranational Justice: The European Court of Human Rights and Turkey's Kurdish Conflict', published by Cambridge University Press, is now available as digital and print editions. Order a copy of the book here.