Abstract
In this paper, I explore an arena in which masculinity is performed and presented by the police in its relation to the wider public in Turkey. I analyze how the Turkish National Police constructs and embodies shifting forms of masculinity. Drawing from a fieldwork conducted in three cities in Turkey and 35 in-depth interviews, I explore the shifting forms of police masculinities in Turkey in three distinct phases: a) policing prior to 2000s, which I call “macho policing,” b) the new policing between 2000-2013, which is often called “community policing,” and c) the protest policing, which I call “militarized policing.” The paper asks in what ways and under what conditions masculinities and policing reproduce each other? How are masculinities of the police formed in relation to ongoing political transformations? This paper seeks to contribute to debates on the gendered analysis of the state and the ethnographic state literature by exploring the ways in which masculinities and statehood through police practice and discourse reproduce each other, and the ways in which masculine power and state power are entwined. The analysis suggests that the normative anti-state/anti-police approach predominant in the ethnographies of the state literature should be approached with caution. The diversity of opinions among the police with regard to issues of police brutality at protest sites, and alternative understandings of policing as well as multiple masculinities displayed at different police units demonstrate that one should not see the police as a monolithic entity and an immediate embodiment of the state.
Keywords: policing; masculinities; political transformation; militarized policing; macho policing; Turkey
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