Political scientist working on memory politics, victimhood and reconciliation
Çağla Demirel studies how societies remember political violence, and what the contest over suffering does to the prospects of reconciliation.
Çağla Demirel completed her Ph.D. in Political Science at Södertörn University in 2023. Her research interests include peace and conflict studies, memory politics, ethnonational identities, collective and competitive victimhood, and reconciliation processes.
Her doctoral dissertation examines the role of competitive victimhood in ethnonational reconciliation processes. Drawing on case studies of Turkish–Armenian relations, Republican–Unionist relations in Northern Ireland, and interethnic relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it offers a framework for understanding how groups engage in competitive victimhood at varying levels of intensity, downplaying or denying the suffering of others.
Building on this work, she is currently conducting a postdoctoral project at the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) entitled Political Pathologies of Victimhood Narratives in Turkey, Serbia and Azerbaijan. The project examines how historical crimes are framed, contested, and compared in political discourse across these countries. She is also a visiting scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies (SUITS).
Research interests Peace and conflict studies, Memory politics, Ethnonational identities, Collective and competitive victimhood, Reconciliation processes.
The project examines how historical crimes are framed, contested and compared in political discourse in Turkey, Serbia and Azerbaijan. It asks when the recognition of past atrocity is offered, withheld or traded, and what the comparison of one's own suffering…
Comparing atrocities, competing memories: a panel on victimhood politics
Memory Studies Research Platform: winter seminar
Victimhood narratives in Turkish foreign policy