The privatization of security in Turkey: Reconsidering the state, the concept of "governmentality" and Neoliberalism

Abstract

The privatization of security services, which implies the dispersal of the legitimate right to use force, has been traditionally understood as operating at the expense of state sovereignty. The increasing privatization of security services around the world and the substantial growth of the private security sector in Turkey create the need to reassess the nature of this privatization. Drawing upon the work of Michel Foucault and other scholars of governmentality, as well as our own field research, we try to make such an assessment, without falling back on the traditional statemarket (state-society) duality. Research shows that the Turkish private security sector, reported as being tied to both the exigencies of the state and the rules of the market, has an amorphic nature marked by intricate relationships, formal and informal, with public law enforcement agencies. We argue that the sector's privatization, although defended by some as a way to grant accountability and transparency to security services, is neither a remedy for those gaps, nor does it imply a straightforward decline of the state; rather, it is proof that the idea of an autonomous, unitary "state" should be revised and a sign that a different and intricate network of state apparatus and private experts continue to govern our lives in ways unique to neoliberalism.