Civic death as a mechanism of retributive punishment: Academic purges in Turkey
| Date | 01 April 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520941744 |
| Author | Seçkin Sertdemir Özdemir |
| Published date | 01 April 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Civic death as a
mechanism of retributive
punishment: Academic
purges in Turkey
Sec¸kin Sertdemir
€
Ozdemir
European Institute, London School of Economics and
Political Science, UK
Abstract
In an era when authoritarian governments increasingly target academics, Turkey’s 2016
purge of more than 6,000 academics and their diminution to civic death is conspicuous
in its cruelty. Although unprecedented, this is not the first time that Turkish academics
have been punished en masse. By looking at the tools with which academics have been
expelled from educational institutions, the public sphere, and the political body,
I attempt to develop a nuanced understanding of the interconnected forms of punish-
ment directed towards academic citizens as knowledge producers. I suggest that the
1980 coup accomplished three things: it introduced new mechanisms of punishment
based on a logic of retribution instead of compensation; it changed the legal system into
a regime of exception; it transformed academics into patriotic worker-citizens. The
latest purges have brought an additional change in the status of academics’ citizenship,
rendering them as disposable citizens forever at risk of being targeted as the
‘civic dead’.
Keywords
academics, civic death, new mechanisms of punishment, purges, regime of exception,
retribution, Turkey
Corresponding author:
Sec¸kin Sertdemir
€
Ozdemir, London School of Economics and Political Science, European Institute, Centre
Building, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: s.sertdemir-ozdemir@lse.ac.uk
Punishment & Society
2021, Vol. 23(2) 145–163
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520941744
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In an era where right-wing and authoritarian governments increasingly target
academics for censure, restrictions, bans, and detentions across countries as
socio-politically diverse as Hungary, Poland, Brazil, India, China, and the
United States (Scott, 2019: 104), Turkey leads the pack by sheer dint of its
excess. Since the failed coup attempt of July 2016, more than 6,000 academics
have been summarily dismissed from their university posts via emergency decrees,
many of them accused by citizen-spy ‘secret informers’ (gizli tanık) of associating
with terrorists, and banned from public service for life. Essentially recognised by
the authorities as dead to the law while they are still living. This emergent pun-
ishment is popularly known in Turkey as ‘civil death’ (sivil €
olu
¨m). These persecuted
academics have been deprived of many basic civic rights: the right to presumption
of innocence and a fair trial; to stand for election and work in the public sector;
freedom of travel, speech and association.
Although unprecedented in scale, this is not the first time that Turkish academ-
ics have been subjected to punishment. From its beginnings in 1923, each new
Turkish regime has targeted academics. Thousands of academics have been
sacked, jailed, denaturalised, and forced to flee the country or to live in internal
exile: from the early years of the Turkish Republic and the post-WWII period,
following the 1980 military coup, and after the failed coup of 2016. By examining
the different yet recurrent tools with which academics have been expulsed from
educational institutions, the public sphere, and the political body, I attempt to
develop a nuanced understanding of the interconnected forms of punishment
directed at academics as knowledge producers. I suggest that despite continuities
with the academic purges of the early Republican era, the 1980 military coup’s
securitisation of the country’s populace and the neoliberalisation of its economy
managed to introduce new punishment mechanisms and, further, that with the
latest purges these mechanisms have now reached new levels of cruelty. In keeping
with the literature on changing regimes of punishment, I argue that the logic of
penalising academics is progressively shifting from a logic of compensation to a
logic of retribution (Fassin, 2018) and that the latter penalty involves subjection to
civic death.
1
Scholars of citizenship agree that the post-World War II model of national
citizenship has failed to fully protect citizens from losing social, economic and
political rights and even from being subjected to total degradation (Agamben,
1998; Arendt, 1976; Balibar, 2015; Lefort, 1986). Much of the literature on citi-
zenship theory emphasises the importance of recognising economic, social and
political rights and considers how rights that are inclusive both within and
beyond national citizenship may be attained (Isin and Turner, 2003; Linklater,
2003; Ong, 2006; Ranci
ere, 2004). As calls for citizenship rights that reflect inclu-
sion and recognition of difference, diversity and multitude have increased (Isin and
Turner, 2003; Kymlicka, 2004; Ranci
ere, 1995), so did authoritarian states begin to
diversify their techniques of governance in order to deprive targeted groups and
individuals of citizenship rights (
€
Ozkazanc¸ , 2011;
€
Ozyu
¨rek, 2018; Tansel, 2018).
Despite the diversity of methods deployed in the global surge in citizenship
146 Punishment & Society 23(2)
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