Re-viewing Video Evidence and Police Violence in the Criminal Courts in Turkey

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of audiovisual evidence claims in the struggle for identifying and documenting police violence in Turkish criminal courts. Focusing on a fatal police shooting in an urban district predominantly populated by leftist groups and marginalized communities, it aims to illustrate the limits of both criminal trials and audiovisual technologies of proof. The “culture of impunity” has been the prevailing framework to describe courts’ denial of the ongoing violence of law enforcement. Instead, this article pays attention to the formation of facts, regulation of sensory perceptions, and affective engagements in the courtroom. Drawing on the ethnographically grounded examination of the hearings and the case file, I argue that criminal trials establish the particular legibility of video evidence and police violence. Furthermore, the breach between the ways of seeing, hearing, and interpreting these media serves to delineate different political communities, challenging the assumed unity over which the law has authority.