The politics of emotions, bio-political border practices and the question of (in)security on the Turkish political territorial borders

Abstract

This paper conceptually and analytically delineates the operationand employment of discourses and the political emotions of fearand anxiety in the making, conception, and cartographicimagination of the contours of modern Turkey’s politicalterritorial boundaries. This study posits that the emergence andformation of the Turkish political territorial borders after thetraumatic and violent experience of the cataclysmic shrinking,collapse and disintegration of the Ottoman Empire continue toinfluence discourses, emotions, practices and policies of bordersecurity and policing. Borders and borderlands are not only siteswhere the state performs, exercises and displays its sovereign willand power in protecting national security, dignity, pride andhonor, but also sources and harbingers of fears, anxieties andontological (in)securities. In the context of the highly publicizedimmigration influx of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis and others intoTurkey, this paper argues that discourses and emotions of fear,anxiety and hate regained new currency and have becomeconsequential in the state’s eliciting of consent from the massesin instituting border walls, fences and harsh border policingpractices and policies on the borderlands and in cities across thecountry.