Reading Agamben backwards: Syrian refugees, biopolitics and sovereignty in Turkey

Abstract

Despite the growing literature that adapts the Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben’s theory of sovereignty to the analysis of the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) increasing authoritarian politics in Turkey, this article draws attention to the theoretical pitfalls of this tendency and argues that these studies mostly fall into the trap of mistaking the consolidation of populist power with the establishment of sovereignty. Utilising the AKP’s biopolitical agenda over Syrian refugees fleeing to Turkey as a case study, we attempt to realize a theoretical twist and offer to read Agamben backwards; that is to say, instead of starting with the assumption that the AKP has established sovereignty in the country, we question whether the party is indeed able to perform a consistent type of biopolitics over the Syrian refugees that would suggest the existence of such sovereignty in the first place. Consequently, our analysis reveals that it is not an Agambenian ‘state of exception’ established by the AKP leadership in Turkey that makes recent Turkish politics look more authoritarian than ever; instead, what we witness is a continuation of a strong state tradition inherited from Turkey’s founding Kemalist era that still determines the boundaries of state–society relations in the country.