%0 Journal Article
%T The Absent Present Law:  An Ethnographic Study of Legal Violence in Turkey
%A Deniz Yonucu
%J Social & Legal Studies
%@ 1461-7390
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/0964663917738044
%X This article, which draws on the case of 10 young socialists from the urban margins of Istanbul, who were arrested as the result of an anti-terror operation in 2007, provides an ethnographically grounded analysis of Turkey¡¯s anti-terror law by examining the threat it poses for the population. Contrary to widespread complaints about a supposed state of lawlessness in Turkey, the article suggests that law, indeed, exists as an overwhelming and ever-present force in the lives of country¡¯s alleged internal enemies (i.e. Kurds, socialists, Alevis, non-Muslims), hanging over their lives like the sword of Damocles. Drawing on Walter Benjamin¡¯s debate on the similarities between law and myth, the article demonstrates that the ambiguity, illegibility and unpredictability of Turkey¡¯s anti-terror law bestows upon the law a mythical and/or sovereign force that controls one¡¯s present and future, and hence one¡¯s fate. The article also argues that the anti-terror operations that started to take place in the urban margins against Kurdish activists and socialist Alevi youth as early as 2007 were harbingers of a growing lawfare in Turkey, which gradually shifted to the center over the course of years
%K Anti-terror laws
%K law and fate
%K legal violence and mythical violence
%K trial
%K Walter Benjamin
%K Alevis
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0964663917738044