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Accepted Paper:
"Social Workers with Guns": Suffocating Police Care
Hayal Akarsu
(Utrecht University)
The Turkish Police underwent intensive reforms in the 2000s, which generated a range of social projects. Such projects felt like suffocating care, which I take as an analytic to explore how populist authoritarianism builds a new relational space where ‘will to care’ and ‘will to punish’ converge.
Paper Abstract:
The Turkish National Police underwent intensive reforms during the 2000s, which generated a range of social projects implemented across different police units with the support of other governmental branches focusing on social policies, welfare and social security. These projects helped police experiment with new, mostly sensorial, policing methods in addition to teaching people how to see and feel like the police. People became subjects of proactive policing projects, and their homes became laboratories of emergent state care. Policing through social projects often felt like suffocating care, especially for regular recipients of social assistance. Based on 18 months of ethnographic research between 2015-2017 in different social settings, from police stations to home visits, the talk analyzes the convergence of a service-oriented bureaucratic ethos with a populist appeal to serve ‘the people’. I take 'suffocating care’ as an analytic to explore how populist authoritarianism makes inroads into everyday life and builds a new relational space where ‘will to care’ and ‘will to punish’ converge.