Launch: Transitional Justice & the Kurdish Conflict: A Grassroots Approach

Join us to celebrate the publication of “Transitional Justice and the Kurdish Conflict: A Grassroots Approach” (Routledge 2025) by Dr Nisan Alıcı (University of Derby).

This new book examines how transitional justice can contribute to transforming the Kurdish conflict in Turkey by centralising the experience of victims-survivors, activists, other grassroots actors. The event is especially timely, coinciding with an ongoing peace process in Turkey aimed at ending the Kurdish conflict that has lasted for over 40 years.

About this Event

You are warmly invited to this interactive discussion on the book’s relevance to both Turkey’s current peace process and other conflict/post-conflict contexts with an experience of transitional justice.

The event will be chaired by Professor Rory O'Connell (Ulster University) and will open with a short presentation by the author. This will be followed by a discussion featuring guest speakers who will offer diverse perspectives:

• Professor Bahar Baser (Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of Durham) - on the current peace process in Turkey and how the book contributes to understanding it.
• Professor Élise Feron (Professor and Director, INCORE) - on broader insights into peace processes and conflict transformation.
• Professor Brandon Hamber (John Hume and Thomas P. O'Neill Chair in Peace, Ulster University) - on transitional justice processes and comparative lessons.
• Dr Clare Wright (Lecturer in Politics and International Studies, Ulster University) - on Latin American experiences, points of resonance, and lessons learned.
• Abdullah Zeytun (Lawyer and former Chair, Diyarbakir Human Rights Association) on grassroots justice and truth-seeking efforts in Turkey.

Following the discussion, drinks and light refreshments will be served.

Date: 12 December 2025

Time: 14:00-15:30pm (followed by optional refreshments)

Venue: Ulster University, Belfast, BC-00-306

About the Book

Despite 40 years of armed conflict, its violent effects on Kurdish people and the wider society, and strong demands for justice, there is little work on transitional justice in the context of the Kurdish conflict. In response, this book explores the limits and potentials of transitional justice in Turkey’s ongoing conflict by focusing on the perspectives of victims-survivors and grassroots justice activists. Such perspectives have received little attention in transitional justice literature, even as it has exhibited an increasing interest in contexts where no formal transition has taken place. But, as this book demonstrates, the Kurdish conflict reveals the importance, not only of documenting these perspectives, but in seeing how those most affected by conflict are able to transform their experience into political action. Drawing on Kurdish victim-survivors’ own understandings of their experiences and activists’ perceptions of the potential of transitional justice, the book thereby addresses, and advocates, the transformative potential of bottom-up, grassroots-level efforts to deliver transitional justice goals.

See “Transitional Justice and the Kurdish Conflict: A Grassroots Approach”

Hosted by the The Transitional Justice Institute & INCORE, Ulster University