The Transformation of Internal Security and of the State in Turkey during the AKP Rule: A Class-Based Analysis

Private Security Work in Turkey: A Case Study of Precarity, Militarism and Alienation

“…What is often ignored in analyses of the authoritarian consolidation of the AKP as a party-state in the making among critical circles is that the private security sector has been a significant part of this broader neoliberal politics of police (Bedirhanoglu et al, 2016). Indeed, one of AKP’s initial moves was the Law on Private Security in 2004, which set about legally incorporating and sanctioning the extra-legal nature of the sector within established regulatory forms.…”

“…First, the law established the legal and institutional mechanisms through which private security has been incorporated into broader neoliberal politics of police. Designed as an explicit part of the AKP’s police reform agenda (Bedirhanoglu et al, 2016), private security was envisaged as an additional security apparatus strictly supervised by the General Directorate of Security and provincial governorships. It was imagined with reference to neoliberal discourse on the dismantling of the public provision of goods.…”

“…Having been reinforced by the recent regional and global rise of extremism and far-right politics (Hayes, 2014; Papanicolaou and Papageorgiou, 2013), Turkey’s neoliberal experience represents a paradigmatic case study for the gradual consolidation of an authoritarian regime. As a recent wave of critical analyses points out, the transformation of state coercion has played a critical role in the formation of neoliberal-cum-Islamic authoritarianism in Turkey (Akca et al, 2014; Bedirhanoglu et al, 2016; Berksoy, 2010, 2013; Cosar and Yucesan-Ozdemir, 2012; Gonen, 2016; Gonen and Yonucu, 2011; Hulagu, 2017). Largely reflecting global processes of neoliberal restructuring, these developments have materialized within the socio-historical peculiarities and struggles in the country.…”