Security and citizenship in global South: in/securing citizens in early republican Turkey (1923-1946)
Author
Bilgin, P.
Ince, B.
Date
2014-12-19Source Title
International Relations
Print ISSN
0047-1178
Publisher
Sage Publications Ltd.
Pages
1 - 21
Language
English
Type
ArticleItem Usage Stats
115
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Abstract
The relationship between security and citizenship is more complex than media portrayals based
on binary oppositions seem to suggest (included/excluded, security/insecurity), or mainstream
approaches to International Relations (IR) and security seem to acknowledge. This is particularly
the case in the post-imperial and/or postcolonial contexts of global South where the transition
of people from subjecthood to citizenship is better understood as a process of in/securing. For,
people were secured domestically as they became citizens with access to a regime of rights and
duties. People were also secured internationally as citizens of newly independent ‘nation-states’
who were protected against interventions and/or ‘indirect rule’ by the (European) International
Society, whose practices were often justified on grounds of the former’s ‘failings’ in meeting the
so-called ‘standards of civilization’. Yet, people were also rendered insecure as they sought to
approximate and/or resist the citizen imaginaries of the newly established ‘nation-states’. The
article illustrates this argument by looking at the case of Turkey in the early Republican era
(1923–1946).