How do groups that have harmed one another remember what happened, and what does the contest over suffering do to peace?
Çağla’s work sits at the meeting point of peace and conflict studies and memory politics. Its central concern is competitive victimhood: the claim that one’s own group is the sole or primary victim of a conflict, and the use of that claim to downplay, relativise or deny the suffering of others.
Rather than treating victimhood narratives as either competitive or inclusive, her doctoral research distinguishes five levels of competitiveness, from revengeful victimhood through strong, mid and weak competitive victimhood to inclusive victimhood. The weaker and inclusive forms are read as signs of potential memory-sharing between former adversaries. The framework was developed through four relationships: Turkish–Armenian relations, Republican–Unionist relations in Northern Ireland, and Bosniak–Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat–Bosniak relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It draws on sixty interviews alongside public opinion polls, party manifestos, political statements, NGO reports and memory sites.
Her postdoctoral project at CBEES, Political Pathologies of Victimhood Narratives in Turkey, Serbia and Azerbaijan, asks how historical crimes are framed, contested and compared in political discourse across the three countries, and what happens when the recognition of past atrocity becomes a bargaining chip in present-day politics.
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 with that of others does to the politics of the present.
The doctoral project developed a typology of competitive victimhood with five levels of competitiveness, and applied it to Turkish–Armenian relations, Republican–Unionist relations in Northern Ireland and interethnic relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was defended in October 2023.
The dissertation examines competitive victimhood, the situation in which opposing groups assert themselves to be the sole or primary victims of a conflict or use their historical suffering to rationalise their own transgressions, and asks how it shapes ethnonational reconciliation. It studies four relationships…