Mobilizing to Unionize

This chapter continues the book’s focus on the indirect effects of international litigation, examining how pending cases can help spur social movements at the domestic level. It analyzes the case of KESK, Turkey’s public sector union confederation, which mobilized international human rights law to carve out space for union organizing amid post-coup repression in the 1990s. Even before favorable rulings were issued, KESK activists invoked the authority of ratified treaties and the threat of ECtHR litigation to legitimize their demands, attract new members, and challenge state restrictions. In the post-2000 period, however, the AKP government shifted to more covert tactics, cultivating a clientelist relationship with a pro-government union to marginalize KESK and stifle dissent. As its organizing strength weakened, KESK increasingly turned to litigation, but ECtHR rulings proved ineffective at disrupting the structural constraints unions faced. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork data and archival material, the chapter shows how litigation evolved from a dynamic tool of mobilization into a strategy of documentation and symbolic resistance. KESK’s trajectory underscores a key insight of the book: the transformative potential of international courts depends less on their enforcement power than on the strength, strategy, and mobilization capacity of grassroots actors.