Spatial reason of the state: the role of space in protest repression in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Between 2007 and 2019 the Turkish regime used protest bans extensively in order to impede collective mobilization. In this paper, drawing on Michel Foucault’s discussion of raison d’état and an original dataset of protest bans, we examine these legal practices as part of the state’s repertoire of protest repression. We point to two limits against the indefinite extension of state regulation that Foucault identifies: an external limit posed by public law and regime of rights, and an internal limit that questions the effectiveness of ‘too much’ government. We argue that authorities use spatial control as a technology to negotiate these two limits. Specifically, authorities deploy the state’s prerogative of regulating public space as a ‘politically neutral’ legal technology to reconcile the banning of protests with the external limit posed by freedom of assembly. Spatial control also works as an effective form of government to negotiate the internal limits of raison d’état. We use illustrative examples to unpack the mechanisms of how spatial technologies neutralize protests to bolster an authoritarian regime. The study contributes to empirical research on protest repression as well as theoretical discussions on the rationalities of government by expanding the geographical scope of existing research to an autocratizing context.

KEYWORDS:

• raison d’état
• protest repression
• space
• spatial governmentality
• Turkey
• autocratization
• competitive authoritarianism

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank Ömer Turan and Güven Gürkan Öztan for their valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. This research would not have been possible without the assistance provided by Ulaş Erdoğdu, Elif Ünal, Eda Canımana, Elif Buse Doyuran, Melis İnce, Ural Berk Karaoğlanoğlu, Seren Selvin Korkmaz and Özlem Tunçel. We are grateful for their work.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Foucault hints at the tension between raison d’état and the interest of the ruler or a party (insofar as these interests are not advantageous for the state) at various spots, as far as we know without developing it further (Foucault, 2007, pp. 92, 268).

2 These laws are Law 2911 (Law on Assembly and Demonstrations, Toplantı ve Gösteri Yürüyüşleri Kanunu); Law 5442 (Provincial Administration Law, İl İdaresi Kanunu); and Law 2935 (State of Emergency Law, Olağanüstü Hal Kanunu).

3 For a detailed account of the curfews declared between August 2015 and March 2018, see TİHV (2018).

4 For a detailed analysis, see Arslanalp and Erkmen (2020a).

5 Atak and Bayram (2017) demonstrate that the state has been more repressive against Kurdish protests compared with others, and that protest repression increased when the PKK’s armed insurgency escalated. Yonucu analyses the use of counterinsurgency tactics in Alevi and Kurdish labour neighbourhoods in Istanbul (Yonucu, 2018b) and anti-terror law as lawfare (Yonucu, 2018a) against Kurdish activists and socialist Alevi youth.

6 For example, see the ban involving the airport in Istanbul (Atatürk Havalimanında ‘Eylem’ Yasak, 2012) as the ban involving the courthouse (İçeride Adalet Olmadığı, 2015), and all party buildings in Izmir (İzmir Valiliğinden Tartışma, 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Research Fund [grant number 13661], Özyeğin University and an IPC-Mercator Fellowship in Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik.