Negotiating Gender and Justice

Long neglected and marginalized by the state, inhabitants of Turkey’s southeast region, particularly its Kurdish communities, look not to the official courts but to renowned local figures, religious leaders, and civil organizations to resolve disputes. This paper explores three types of alternative judicial bodies (AJBs): (1) traditional Heqî AJBs, which prioritize religion and patriarchy in their decision-making; (2) self-identified progressive AJBs run by local civil society organizations; and (3) newly emerging AJBs aligned with state institutions, reflecting the state’s new frontiers in the region. Although these judicial bodies, shaped by diverse adjudicative tendencies and deeply embedded in the region’s religious, political, and social fabric, differ in their impact in terms of whom and what they include or exclude, they collectively provide alternative pathways for dispute resolution. This paper examines the role of AJBs in resolving disputes in the Kurdish southeast, focusing on gender, religious discourses, the involvement of feminist activists and organizations, and the positionality of these bodies within regional politics and sovereignty formation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mardin, it examines interactions between Kurdish AJBs and women’s agency and mobility, while situating AJBs within broader debates on legal pluralism and gender justice in feminist legal scholarship.