Exploring Relational Agency in Collective Mobilisation for Justice

The chapter examines the Saturday Mothers, a long-standing intergenerational movement in Turkey advocating for justice for families of the disappeared. Through a relational lens, it explores how the movement constructs a social network that fosters solidarity, collective agency, and transformative personal and political identities. The Saturday Mothers, operating as a ‘political family’, challenge conventional definitions of family by creating a space of care, empathy, and shared grief. Their horizontal and transparent structure sustains their activism across diverse political, social, and economic backgrounds. The movement’s practices address the impact of ambiguous loss, enabling families to cope with psychological isolation and social marginalisation. By reclaiming public spaces such as Galatasaray Square as symbolic sites of truth and memory, they demand holistic justice. The chapter highlights how the Saturday Mothers’ grassroots mobilisation practises a relational agency, redefining victim participation and creating a social space for truth-telling and healing beyond the limitations of formal transitional justice mechanisms.