Impunity As Exclusion: Politics of Impunity and Legal Violence in Turkey

Impunity refers to the absence of punishment, often resulting from formal legislation or a lack of political will, which creates a de facto regime of irresponsibility. Discussions of impunity tend to focus on the perpetrators of abuses and the reluctance of the state to prosecute them. However, impunity is essentially something that belongs to the universe of victims, who experience it as a persistent denial of justice and a form of legal and political exclusion. This denial not only normalises the crime, but may also function as a form of racialised punishment that targets political minorities. By excluding demands for justice and reparations from the public sphere, impunity perpetuates state violence against survivors, which manifests itself as legal violence. This paper aims to explore impunity as an active political tool for exclusion and racialised violence. It focuses on Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish political minority, analysing how impunity serves as both a governance strategy and a mechanism for systemic state violence.

Impunity is a long-standing policy in Turkey, where the Kurdish minority has consistently been subjected to state violence, including mass crimes, extrajudicial killings and forced displacement. These crimes have not been addressed by a comprehensive justice initiative. Accountability has never been established and victims' losses have not been compensated. Instead, official responses have reinforced impunity by manipulating legal frameworks and discrediting victims' narratives. Following the 2016 coup attempt, Turkey entered a state of emergency, which allowed the government to institutionalise impunity on a wider scale. The Turkish government used the state of emergency to reinforce impunity as a tool of governance. Drawing on the increasing strategic use of law in Turkey, this presentation aims to examine how impunity reinforces the political exclusion of marginalised groups on the one hand, and strenghtens the arbitrary governance on the other.