Mobilizing supranational courts in authoritarian and violent contexts: Kurdish lawyers before the European Court of Human Rights

The case of Kurdish legal mobilization at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) raises a dual puzzle. If the ECtHR is the world’s ‘most effective international human rights tribunal’, why has it been increasingly non-receptive to victims of state violence? Why do Kurdish lawyers continue to seek justice in Strasbourg? More generally, what are the constraints facing legal activists in mobilizing supranational human rights courts against authoritarian regimes engaged in state violence? Where such violence occurs in the context of an armed conflict and the government resorts to counter-terrorism defense, ‘how, why, and how effectively’ does a social movement mobilize international human rights law? This chapter uses extensive field research to build on a burgeoning recent literature adapting the legal mobilization literature to authoritarian contexts. The chapter advances this scholarship by, first, shifting the focus from domestic legal systems to supranational courts and, second, extending the scope of analysis from legal repression to state violence, which raises distinct hurdles to mobilizing in and against authoritarian regimes. Third, it illustrates the particular challenges posed by violent ethno-political conflicts.