Provocation and urban disorder

Abstract

In Police, Provocation, Politics: Counterinsurgency in Istanbul, Deniz Yonucu examines state security and policing practices in the working-class Istanbul neighborhood of “Devrimova” (a pseudonym), home to Turkish and Kurdish Alevis, many of whom are active in leftist and socialist groups. Simmering violence and shootings in Devrimova and similar working-class neighborhoods, occasionally erupting as in Gezi in 2013, is often blamed on “criminal gangs,” “Alevi anger” or Alevi-Sunni sectarian tensions (pp. 72–77). Without downplaying Turkey's deep ethnosectarian and ethnonationalist divisions, Yonucu argues that an underappreciated dimension of Istanbul's urban disorder is counterinsurgency. This refers to police-instigated violence that is covert, designed to provoke counter-violence, and whose ultimate purpose is to undermine leftist solidarity. Refined by British and US intelligence units over the course of the Cold War, these strategies are referred to by the author as “provocative counterorganzation” (p. 72). According to Yonucu, they constitute a cornerstone tactic in contemporary urban policing, which does not seek to straightforwardly maintain order but to “produce manageable conflict” (p. 113) and, in so doing, keep would-be revolutionaries busy with ongoing problems of insecurity.

The central claim that police provocateurs covertly inflict and incite violence might shock some readers. However, those familiar with British security tactics in Belfast during the Troubles, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) actions against the Black Panthers, or White South African policing during the anti-Apartheid movement (see Haysom, 1989; Marx, 1974; Sluka, 2000, all cited in Yonucu, 2022) will recognize this argument. What truly astonishes is Yonucu's skill in executing such a project. Throughout the book, many of her acquaintances are unjustly arrested, often on fabricated terrorism charges, with numerous activists forced to flee the country or endure police violence or imprisonment. Raised in Istanbul, Yonucu is keenly aware of the dangers her research poses to herself and her interlocutors. Her creative work-arounds are praiseworthy and, since her argument holds in other places where policing blurs lines between legitimate and illegitimate authority, her methods offer useful signposts for contemporary policing studies.

Rather than interviewing or observing police directly, Yonucu first traces policing strategies through archival research. She draws on memoirs of state security officers, writings of high-ranking security officials, and records from the Turkish National Assembly's discussions on counterinsurgency during the Cold War. The historical evidence is compelling. At the height of left-wing mobilization in the 1970s, to name one example, the commander of the Special Warfare Department wrote a high-profile article intended only for military readers. This article, leaked to the public years later, advocated for the military's creation of covert groups and “fake operations” involving “cruel and unjust acts” falsely attributed to dissident groups (pp. 10–11). Instructions in the techniques of provocative collusion and infiltration are described in David Galula's Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (1964), which, Yonucu points out, continues to be assigned as a required reading in Turkey's military training academy.

As to her present-day descriptions of policing, Yonucu's fieldwork unearths links between counterinsurgent policing and urban disorder that are understandably less concrete and more speculative, as covert police operations are difficult to capture ethnographically. This is not necessarily a weakness. Through interviews, Yonucu effectively conveys the distrust, confusion, and day-to-day toil of urban violence that envelops Devrimova residents. This, I think, is one of the most interesting aspects of the book. Tellingly, for her argument, Devrimova has no police station, and sightings of uniformed officers are rare, even during episodes of gang violence. Instead of intervening when needed—during shootouts and vigilantism—police in this book consistently arrive only after the violence; after Istanbul's residents have already suffered. A striking example is a 2013 incident in Gülsuyu (pp. 138–145), wherein Yonucu's acquaintances face gunfire from an unknown gang, prompting a self-proclaimed revolutionary militia to respond in-kind. Only after this cycle of violence and counter-violence, where the identities of the perpetrators remain elusive, do the police finally arrive. Chillingly, rather than targeting the original culprits, they arrest Yonucu's leftist interlocuters on terrorism charges. This incident remains, of course, open to interpretation. Yonucu refrains from trying to prove outright that the initial violence was inflicted by police provocateurs but nonetheless she skillfully connects the dots already laid out in her scrupulous historical groundwork. Instead of attempting to definitively establish police intentions or identify specific groups—an endeavor better suited for investigative journalism—Yonucu portrays the currents of palpable mistrust and suspicion that shape residents' perceptions and experiences of policing.

Yonucu's book stands apart from existing police ethnographies, notably diverging from Didier Fassin's (2013) Enforcing Order: An Urban Ethnography of Policing. Unlike Fassin, Yonucu does not spotlight the police as ethnographic protagonists. Instead, it is the residents of Devrimova who take center stage. Conspicuously absent are the typical scenes of police studies: no ride-alongs, no station chitchat, and no depiction of the daily grind of policing. However, Yonucu's approach through resident interviews yields compelling insights into egregious police behavior. In her passage on “violent interpellation” (pp. 77–82), she recounts (via residents' testimonies) brutal attacks on Alevi communities, where police have been reported shouting “Death to Alevis” (p. 80). This type of racialized violence blurs the identities of residents who, despite having multiple affiliations such as revolutionaries, workers, or Kurds, are singled out by police solely for being perceived as Alevis. Yonucu argues that such “violent interpellation” (p. 78) serves as a provocative tactic to exacerbate ethnosectarian and ethnonationalist divisions, ultimately fracturing unity among dissenting factions.

Yonucu's study of counterinsurgency tactics in Istanbul's Devrimova resonates deeply with scholarship on security in Latin America, a region with which I am admittedly much more familiar. In Latin America, militarized security forces have perpetuated violence in the name of democracy, paralleling the ambiguous roles of states in post-Cold War Central America (Sanford, 2003). From one angle, Yonucu can be said to be challenging simplistic views of “crime-state symbiosis” (Lupsha, 1996), revealing how state institutions employ covert tactics reminiscent of Latin American contexts and post-Cold War attempts to control and suppress dissent. This complexity mirrors studies on “fragmented sovereignty” (Davis, 2011) where distinguishing between state authority and criminal influence proves challenging. By documenting how policing blurs lines between legitimate and illegitimate authority in Devrimova, Yonucu underscores the difficulty of deciphering state intentions amid urban disorder. Her indirect way into police work, blending archival research and ethnographic insights from policed populations themselves, offers guidance for future studies navigating the ambiguous boundaries of power and control globally. Yonucu not only enhances our understanding of policing strategies in Istanbul but also provides a critical perspective on similar dynamics worldwide, where state, police, military, crime, and gang activities intersect in ways that defy conventional categorization.