Policing Student Protests in Turkey: From the Promise of ‘Citizen in Uniform’ to Dictating ‘létat c’est moi’

Abstract

To fulfill the requirements of European Union membership, Turkey promised to improve policing policies and practices in the first decade of the twenty-first century. It was hoped that the police would embrace the concept of being “citizens in uniform,” serving the whole community and not merely the privileged few or state interests. However, in early 2021, during the student protest against the controversial appointment of a staunch supporter of the ruling party as the rector of Bogazici University, police adopted a heavy-handed approach responding to the protests, including a widespread abuse of power. Using the “cyber-ethnographic” method and analysis of primary and secondary sources, including the author’s 28 years of professional lived experience at the Turkish Police Academy, this essay claims that there has been a move to an authoritarian stage in the politics of the police. The study explores why students are labeled as deviants and terrorists and encounter other forms of discrimination and exclusion. The essay argues that the promise of the police as ‘citizens in uniform’ has been ignored and the police have been reverting to ‘létat c’est moi.’ The responses of the authorities to the student protests have been brutal: categorizing, marginalizing, blaming, criminalizing, and demonizing the students based on their ideological, ethnic, religious, and sexual identities. The article concludes that assaults on academic freedom, on the right of peaceful assembly and LGBTQ rights aim at homogenizing and controlling all areas of Turkey.