This article explains whether or not, and the specific ways in which, truth commissions established during a political transition in fact transform lessons from history into political and judicial impact, defined as influence on government policy and judicial processes. It isolates impact from the causal effects of similar postconflict institution building and other transitional justice and conflict resolution measures. Drawing upon the existing literature, it examines several causal mechanisms through which commissions are expected to influence politics and society. These include direct political impact through the implementation of recommendations and indirect political impact through civil society mobilization. Truth commissions may also have positive judicial impact by contributing to human rights accountability and negative judicial impact by promoting impunity. The article concludes that truth commissions do promote political and judicial change, albeit modestly, especially when human rights and victims' groups pressure governments for policy implementation.

There is unprecedented domestic and international interest in Turkey's political past, accompanied by a societal demand for truth and justice in addressing past human rights violations. This article poses the question: Is Turkey coming to terms with its past? Drawing upon the literature on nationalism, identity, and collective memory, I argue that the Turkish state has recently taken steps to acknowledge and redress some of the past human rights violations. However, these limited and strategic acts of acknowledgment fall short of initiating a more comprehensive process of addressing past wrongs. The emergence of the Justice and Development Party as a dominant political force brings along the possibility that the discarded Kemalist memory framework will be replaced by what I call majoritarian conservatism, a new government-sanctioned shared memory that promotes uncritical and conservative-nationalist interpretations of the past that have popular appeal, while enforcing silence on critical historiographies that challenge this hegemonic memory and identity project. Nonetheless, majoritarian conservatism will probably fail to assert state control over memory and history, even under a dominant government, as unofficial memory initiatives unsettle the hegemonic appropriation of the past.

When do judges initiate public action outside the courtroom? What kinds of political activities do they engage in? What are the consequences of their interactions with social and political actors? This article investigates judges’ efforts to influence law and policy as opinion leaders, protesters, and network builders. In light of recent devevelopments in Turkey, I argue that intrajudicial conflict, that is, the increasing salience of hitherto dormant tensions inside the judiciary, is the primary source of off-bench judicial mobilization. Participants in off-bench judicial mobilization seek to maintain, reform, or transform judicial institutions in ways that enhance their ideational and strategic goals.

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