The politics and geography of urban security services provided by private security companies: the case of Ankara, Turkey

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2023-4-6
Tezcan, Ayhan Melih
Today, the state continues to be defined as a form of social relationship, organized in the form of a nation-state, and continuing its dual functionality in terms of production and reproduction of capitalist social relations, through the sphere of sovereignty (spatial) and the monopoly of legitimate violence (functional). The transformation process of security production as a part of the commercialization and marketization of certain public services (especially health and education) has been critical in the last three decades in Turkey in terms of both the dialectic of urban social control and the identification of the relationship between urban security production and spatial (re)production, which necessitates a discussion. In this context, the aim of the study is to explore how urban private security is applied concretely in the case of Turkey and Ankara in the neoliberal period by referring to the relationship between the nation-state's use of physical force-violent means and the commodification and commercialization process of urban security services. In the study, while trying to reach real-concrete knowledge, the vantage points determined as “capital accumulation process,” “mediation of state-capital nexus,” “social surveillance practice,” and “production of surveillance spaces” formed the concrete basis of the critical evaluation. In this direction, the provision of urban security services by private security companies results in the "neoliberal urban security regime," which means the commodification of security and the pluralization of service providers while dialectically bringing along spatial and administrative expansion in terms of nation-state power at concrete and symbolic levels.

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Citation Formats
A. M. Tezcan, “The politics and geography of urban security services provided by private security companies: the case of Ankara, Turkey,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2023.