Time: Friday, 22 April 2022 at 1:00pm - 2:00pm (UTC+3)
Please join us live via Zoom-stream on the following address:
https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/67185341014?pwd=MTZOY1BVaWtGNTV5eWk1NFp6dUNh…
Meeting ID: 671 8534 1014
Passcode: eurostorie
Securitisation Practices in Turkey in the Post-2016 Era
In light of Turkey’s mounting human rights abuses, rising authoritarianism, and new laws governing security policies, this study critically examines how the AKP government mobilizes new securitisation techniques. Here, I trace the history of those who have had their job appointment or promotion withdrawn as a result of security vetting due to alleged ‘culpability of association’ with terrorism. To tease out how the Turkish case may shed light on securitisation strategies used in a country with authoritarian tendencies, I critically investigate the shifts in Turkey’s security practices in three dimensions: protection, control, and regulation. I argue that through a process of hybridization whereby new securitisation strategies now supplement older authoritarian police security strategies, a new form of authoritarian securitisation is born, one that relies on the strategies of mass lateral surveillance, participation in securitisation - called ‘biosecurity’ by Gros -, governance through contingency, centralization of personal biodata, and perfusion of distrust.
Dr Seçkin Sertdemir Özdemir is Collegium Researcher in the Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science and Turku Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Turku and Visiting Fellow in the European Institute at London School of Economics and Political Science. She previously worked as a Research Fellow from 2003 to 2016 and an Assistant Professor in the department of philosophy at Galatasaray University. Her recent publications include “Civic Death as a Mechanism of Retributive Punishment: Academic Purges in Turkey”, Punishment & Society (2020), “Pity the exiled: Turkish academics in exile” Journal of Refugee Studies (2019); and “Civil and Civic death in the New Authoritarianisms: Punishment of Dissidents in Turkey”, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (with E. Özyürek)(2019); and “Exile and Plurality in Neoliberal Times: Turkey’s Academics for Peace”, Public Culture (with N. Mutluer and E. Özyürek) (2019).