Victim Leadership and Mobilization in Turkey and Tunisia

Justice Visions

We kick off this new season of the Justice Visions podcast with a set of conversations that we initiated during the recent Justice Visions Conference, exploring victim participation, mobilization, and resistance within the realm of transitional justice. In this first episode of these miniseries, we shed light on victims driving transitional justice efforts in Turkey and Tunisia.
Our guests, Dr. Sélima Kebaili and Dr. Güneş Daşlı, both focus in their research on women survivors in contexts of conflict. Sélima, a senior lecturer at the University of Geneva, touches on the marginalization of female survivors in the Tunisian Truth and Dignity Commission and how survivors sought to overcome this. Güneş, a research fellow at Loughborough University, speaks of the mobilization of members of the Saturday Mothers who seek justice for enforced disappearances and crimes committed by Turkish state forces and paramilitaries.
Both scholars unpack the nuances of labels such as “leaders” and “victims”. Sélima explains that while “victim leadership” might make sense in terms of underlining the important role victims play in driving transitional justice efforts, we have to be mindful of the label when applying it in the context of movements, as it runs the risk of defining certain victims as leaders and pushing others into more passive identities. Many women assert their agency beyond the public realm, and a discourse of leadership may render their actions invisible.
Güneş points to the ways in which in Turkey survivors and family members use the labels of victim and survivor flexibly and how they navigate multiple identities. Starting their justice activism as relatives of the disappeared, they often evolve into human rights defenders, political actors, or lawyers, embracing multiple roles that sustain their resistance and resilience.
In both cases, acknowledging a diversity of experiences, identities and approaches is crucial, since rebuilding identities after extreme violence is a very delicate process. As Sélima notes, "It doesn’t always require a grand gesture, and often it unfolds through more modest everyday forms of reparation, like returning to work, reconnecting with others, and restoring a social life."

In the absence of an official transitional justice process in Turkey, groups like the Saturday Mothers have for nearly 30 years led informal efforts for legal accountability, memory work, and truth recovery. Güneş emphasizes that victims maintain a long-term perspective and are not dissuaded by the apparent lack of hope: "We know that there is no hope now, but we continue. We are going to archive. We are going to focus on what we do now. But when the time comes, we are going to act."