Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul | Book Talk with Deniz Yonucu

In this presentation, drawing from her book Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul, Professor Yonucu will offer a counterintuitive analysis of contemporary policing practices, with a focus on how the state security apparatus incites counterviolence, sustains perpetual conflict, and fosters ethno-racial discord. Using a case study from Turkey, but also engaging with various examples from the Global South and North, she argues that policing is not merely a project of pacification but also a strategy of provocation and a permanent war on politics. Rooted in colonial logic, this form of policing goes beyond maintaining order to actively creating disorder. She will explore how this war specifically targets existing abolitionist practices developed by oppressed communities. Informed by cultural archives of oppression and resistance, these abolitionist world-building practices are perfect examples of politics (a la Rancière) that should be taken seriously by academics who are committed to learn from the tradition of the oppressed.

Deniz Yonucu received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from Cornell University and is an Associate Professor at Newcastle University's School of Geography, Politics, and Sociology. Her research interests lie at the intersection of anthropology, political theory, law & society studies, and urban studies. Her monograph Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul won the 2023 Anthony Leeds Prize for the best book in urban anthropology, awarded by the Critical Urban Anthropology Section of the American Anthropological Association. She has published extensively on topics related to policing, criminalisation, surveillance, memory, racism, and left-wing and anti-colonial resistance. Her work has appeared in various venues, including prestigious peer-reviewed journals such as Current Anthropology, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Race & Class, City & Society, Social and Legal Studies, and The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. She is the co-editor of the Directions Section for the Political and Legal Anthropology Review and a co-founder of the Anthropology of Surveillance Network and the Under Surveillance podcast series.