Security and citizenship in the global South: In/securing citizens in early republican Turkey (1923–1946)

Abstract

The relationship between security and citizenship is more complex than media portrayals based on binary oppositions seem to suggest (included/excluded, security/insecurity), or mainstream approaches to International Relations (IR) and security seem to acknowledge. This is particularly the case in the post-imperial and/or postcolonial contexts of global South where the transition of people from subjecthood to citizenship is better understood as a process of in/securing. For, people were secured domestically as they became citizens with access to a regime of rights and duties. People were also secured internationally as citizens of newly independent 'nation-states' who were protected against interventions and/or 'indirect rule' by the (European) International Society, whose practices were often justified on grounds of the former's 'failings' in meeting the so-called 'standards of civilization'. Yet, people were also rendered insecure as they sought to approximate and/or resist the citizen imaginaries of the newly established 'nation-states'. The article illustrates this argument by looking at the case of Turkey in the early Republican era .

Enacting the International/Reproducing Eurocentrism

“…The way in which the Ottoman Empire/Turkey socialised into the international system worked to instil 'Turkey' with a series of anxieties with respect to the international system, and its status within it (Bilgin 2009;Bilgin and Ince 2015;Zarakol 2010). These anxieties work to write 'Turkey' as an in-between space, reproduced through the European gaze as a site between the 'East' and the 'West' , the secular and the religious, the modern and the traditional.…”

Trade Dynamics and Industrial Evolution: A Comprehensive Time Series Analysis of Turkey s Import-Export Trends and Manufacturing Growth (1923-2013)

“…Understanding this evolution, however, requires more than just a cursory overview of historical events. A data-driven examination provides a more nuanced understanding of the intricacies of Turkey's economic growth, fluctuations, and the underlying factors that have contributed to its current economic landscape (Bilgin & Ince, 2015). This paper seeks to provide such an analysis.…”