Complaints and disclosures of sexual violence at universities in Turkey

This thesis revolves around the mechanisms of complaints and disclosures of sexual violence at universities in Turkey by focusing on the experiences of survivors. Adopting a relational understanding of violence and conceptualizing it as a continuum, it first unpacks how complaint processes operate to enable the institutional reproduction of violence for survivors through exhaustion driven by procedural ambiguity and lack of standardization; routinization of impunity due to temporal limitations and flexible definitions; and institutional insensitivity. It then introduces different practices of disclosures as both feminist collective actions and calls for solidarity among survivors while arguing that these practices create counterpublics at digital, discursive, and spatial levels. This thesis also examines the setbacks of disclosure mechanisms, including stigmatization, victim-blaming, social ostracism, and the normalization of sexual violence. It also focuses on the (trans)formation of subjectivity for survivors and other parties during and after the complaint and disclosure processes while revealing the multiple and shifting subject positions individuals hold. It concludes with a focus on solidarity, exploring how survivors engage with and constitute themselves in relation to solidarity networks as well as revealing the challenging aspects of these networks. In doing so, this thesis aims to create a link between complaints and disclosures and address the gap in the literature by providing an in-depth exploration of both in academic settings in Turkey.