State Violence and Legal Accountability: The Wait for Justice

This book pursues a critical perspective on the phenomenon of state violence and its legal unaccountability. Focusing on the role of myths, assumptions and ghosts that surround the meaning of the state and performance of state violence, this book details a fresh perspective on that violence and its legal unaccountability.It asks: How does our understanding of the state reflect on the political demands and legal processes of accountability?To pursue this question, the book traces the political and legal aftermath of the police killing of a 14-year-old boy, Berkin Elvan, during the nationwide Gezi protests of the summer of 2013 in Turkey.Countering imaginaries of the state clash between the state officer’s attempt to attribute personal responsibility to Elvan for his own death and public demands for state accountability.Meanwhile, the prolonged legal process ensures that subjects who seek accountability find themselves in a long and exhausting legal battle which dominates their lives and