Private security has become a central form of everyday policing in the Southern and Northern countries alike, and has thereby redefined the modern conception of security, conventionally understood as the exclusive domain of the state. The relevant academic literature has seemed to problematize the issue either as a facet of the erosion of state monopoly of violence or as a dispersion of neoliberal governmentality. These positionsneo-Weberian and neo-Foucauldian, respectively -fail to grasp both the role of the capitalist state in the privatization of security and its class character. The Turkish case is quite telling about the constitutive role of the state in this process, which has been a class-driven project, reflecting contested class relations, from the 1960s to the 2000s.

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With one of the largest and fastest growing private security sectors in the greater EU area, Turkey offers an interesting case study for examining the effects of neoliberal policing on private security labour. The analysis is based on unstructured interviews (N = 20) with private security guards, media reports and government documents. Focusing on (1) precarity, (2) militarism and (3) alienation, we find that while private security has been decisive in the militarization of urban space and the exercise of authoritarian control in daily social relations, it is also characterized by class contradictions manifested in the lived experiences of security labour. The growth of Turkish private security and its effects are both part of the common extension of pacification yet uniquely conditioned by the emergence of a single-party, authoritarian regime that has deliberately extended its reach, in part, through the expansion of private security.

This thesis analyzes the historical marginalization of the Altındağ gecekondu (squatter) region in Ankara, Turkey from the 1920s to the 1970s in the context of capitalist urbanization. The analysis is developed through a critical exploration of the social history of the police that becomes pivotal for the materialization of state power on the urban margins. Deploying a dialectical analysis of the historical matrix of the police, class, and urban space, the thesis reveals the contradictory character of police power shaped by various forms of social, spatial, and political contestations. A tripartite, historically constituted, analytical framework is offered for a radical critique of police power comprised of distinct forms of struggle that reflect the fundamental concerns and foundational contradictions haunting modern police science in the management of capitalist modernity: (1) struggles over urban space; (2) struggles over forms of subsistence; and (3) struggles over a moral order. The thesis explores how these three forms of struggle historically condition the making of social criminality as a practice of subsistence and the production of popular illegality which manifests as an inarticulate and subversive form of moral order on the urban margin. The thesis further explores the cathartic association of social marginality with radical politics in the context of the gecekondu struggles in the 1970s. This reading of police power exposes a relational perspective that acknowledges the historical agency of subordinate classes in the formation and contestation of capitalist modernity. Finally, it is argued that a dialectical critique of police power provides a significant political and theoretical medium through which a radical critique of capitalist modernity from below can be formulated. 'enigma' in the thesis with our hours-long discussions at Mike's Place during his visiting period at Carleton University in Winter 2019. Many thanks Mustafa, for being also a source of 'hope' in this disenchanted world! vi I cannot pay back my indebtedness to all the beautiful people from Altındağ, Ankara that I met throughout the exciting, frustrating, as well as emotionally heavy process of field research. The mere words uttered here represent the nakedness inherent to the linguistic form. I would still like to present my sincere thanks to all my respondents for being amazingly generous and considerate in providing affirmative responses to my interview requests, and sharing their personal stories with me. I also owe special thanks to dear Yaşar Seyman, Sıtkı

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