Paper short abstract:

The paper scrutinizes the extent to which international reform endeavors that aim at a better functioning of state security authorities contribute to sustainable security provision in fragile contexts, and maps out alternatives. The argument draws on examples from security sector reforms in Turkey.

Paper long abstract:

The paper addresses the international knowledge regime of 'good security governance' and scrutinizes the extent to which - mostly internationally agreed - reform endeavors that aim at a better functioning of state security forces contribute to sustainable security provision in fragile contexts . Using the Turkish security sector reforms (SSR) as an example, it will be argued that institutional reform and engagement with governance capacity development tend to be over-emphasized whereas the relationship is not sufficiently tackled between state authorities and the local population whose security shall be produced. In contexts that emerge from armed conflicts, political crises or rapid political transformations, an erratic performance of state authorities is frequently accompanied by a deterioration of the social contract at the same time: the state is not trusted or relied upon by the citizenry. Structures for self-help replace the state delivery of public services. This is the case in the Southeast of Turkey where the Kurdish struggle for political autonomy is fought over with the Turkish armed forces. While this situation lets part of the population act as 'security experts', their solutions to security problems and locally grounded experiences are hardly fed back into the SSR knowledge regime. A case in point is the way in which Turkish state officials interact - or rather do not interact - with committed actors from civil society in the SSR arena. The power hierarchy that is reconstructed with support of international donor driven reforms sidelines the knowledge from the ground and constrains meaningful civic agency instead of empowering.