Abstract
How can we understand the state security apparatus as a provocative force—one that incites counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord? Drawing on her recent book, Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul (Cornell University Press, 2022), Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on affect-and-emotion-generating provocative policing techniques and their divisive urban dimensions. Situating Turkish policing within a global context and combining archival work and oral history narratives with ethnographic research, she will demonstrate how counterinsurgency strategies from the Cold War and decolonial eras continue to inform contemporary urban policing in Istanbul.
04 May 2022