Police, Provocation, Politics - (Police/Worlds: Studies in Security, Crime, and Governance) by Deniz Yonucu (Paperback)

About the Book

"Situating Turkish counterinsurgent policing within a global context of Cold War counterinsurgencies that inform current security practices and combining archival work and oral history with ethnographic research in Istanbul's dissident working-class neighborhoods, the book sheds light on counterinsurgency's provocative, affect generating, divisive techniques and urban dimensions"--

Book Synopsis

In Police, Provocation, Politics, Deniz Yonucu presents a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, focusing particular attention on the incitement of counterviolence, perpetual conflict, and ethnosectarian discord by the state security apparatus. Situating Turkish policing within a global context and combining archival work and oral history narratives with ethnographic research, Yonucu demonstrates how counterinsurgency strategies from the Cold War and decolonial eras continue to inform contemporary urban policing in Istanbul. Shedding light on counterinsurgency's affect-and-emotion-generating divisive techniques and urban dimensions, Yonucu shows how counterinsurgent policing strategies work to intervene in the organization of political dissent in a way that both counters existing alignments among dissident populations and prevents emergent ones.

Yonucu suggests that in the places where racialized and dissident populations live, provocations of counterviolence and conflict by state security agents as well as their containment of both cannot be considered disruptions of social order. Instead, they can only be conceptualized as forms of governance and policing designed to manage actual or potential rebellious populations.

Review Quotes

One of the strengths of the book is to present [counterinsurgency] from a relational perspective, taking into account the interactions between certain sectors of society and the security forces.

-- "Cultures and Conflicts"

Police, Provocation, Politics offers cutting-edge theorizing around the essential topics of surveillance and counterinsurgency combined with extensive, rigorous, and sensitive ethnography to inform political theory in new and exciting ways. The book is also the remarkable product of fieldwork conducted in a volatile and unstable context and under extremely difficult conditions.

-- "Anthony Leeds Book Prize Committee"

The book thus offers a valuable contribution to global literature, serving as a case study that investigates the interconnected formal and informal boundaries of police violence within the context of the official security force of the state.

-- "Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association"

This book is a model of how field research should be conducted and how to structure the presentation of results--not only to engage with other scholars but also without providing information that could be used against the protagonists of the research. It combines extensive fieldwork, ethical and political clarity regarding the role and responsibility of the researcher.

-- "Napoli Monitor"

This book is essential for scholars of political science, urban studies, and human rights, offering a compelling lens through which to view the complex interplay between state power and grassroots resistance.

-- "Politics and Rights Review"

Yonucu's book a masterpiece of militant ethnography, one that provides evidence for a radically counter- hegemonic interpretation of institutions, deliberately positioned on the side of those who challenge them.

-- "city and society"

Police, Provocation, Politics presents a deep understanding of urban policing and surveillance practices and how community members receive and respond to them. Many of the book's themes, arguments, and concepts relate to critical surveillance studies literature and present ethnographically grounded, rich, and innovative insights.

-- "Surveillance and Society"

An astute analysis of the mutually constitutive relationship between police/military forces and sources of political dissent and resistance in working-class neighborhoods of Istanbul.

-- "Choice"

An inspiring example of the recent generation of urban studies scholarship in Turkey, Police, Provocation, Politics offers a major contribution to the field.

-- "New Perspectives on Turkey"

Presented with eloquent organization and lucid writing, the book exhibits ethnography at its prime. Yonucu's writing makes an invaluable contribution to both our understanding of the dialectical relationship between contemporary urban policing and politics, as well as the democratization of the scholarly field.

-- "PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology"

Through her deeply situated ethnography of a revolutionary community that has found ways of embodying an intergenerational revolutionary politics within and outside the modern state, Yonucu shows abolitionists everywhere ways of embodying liberation.

-- "American Ethnologist"

Police, Provocation, Politics is a groundbreaking contribution to the anthropology of policing, surveillance, and resistance

-- "Journal of Middle East Women's Studies"

Police, Provocation, Politics makes a timely contribution to the rapidly growing critical scholarship on discriminatory and authoritarian policing, surveillance and security practices designed to disrupt, maintain or generate specific and selected socio-political orders.

-- "International Journal of Urban and Regional Research"

About the Author

Deniz Yonucu is Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University. She is a cofounder and coconvenor of the Anthropology of Surveillance Network (ANSUR). Follow her on X @denizyonucu.