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

Abstract

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.

Navigating Wait Space in Uncertain Times: Young Women and Precarious Labour in Turkey

“…Many of the women who were interviewed worked in the private security industry—one of the largest growing sectors in the last decade and a manifestation of the deepening levels precarity and uncertainty that have come to characterise the Turkish labour market. Characterised by highly exploitative work conditions (long work hours, low wages, lacking or limited social benefits), private security work is advertised as a remedy to the rising levels of youth unemployment by the mainstream media outlets, while for many unemployed young people it is viewed as “an escape strategy” from long‐term unemployment (Dölek and Rigakos 2020:126).…”

Fingerprinting and Biopolitical Police Surveillance in Turkey

“…38–42). It is similarly worth noting the recent efforts of a handful of researchers critiquing the formation and transformation of the police and the wider political repercussions on societal relations (Berksoy, 2013; Dolek, 2015; Dölek & Rigakos, 2020; Gönen, 2016; Gönen et al., 2013; Mercan & Denizhan, 2020). These critical policing studies have converged on the point that some ethno‐religious groups have been categorised as ‘internal enemies’ as a direct consequence of the top‐down modernization project, the ethno‐racial politics of the early Republic of Turkey and subsequently state‐driven identity consolidation policies, and the implications of market–performance logic on policing in the post‐1980s.…”