Criminalizing the dangerous others in Istanbul : the middle class and the fear of crime in the 2000's

Abstract

Istanbul has undergone a significant securitization process in recent years. This process has transformed the spatial organization of the city and brought with it the expanded use of control devices in everyday life. This process of securitization that has been realized through public and private channels was accompanied by a wave of street crime that broke out in 2003. This thesis analyzes the public and political debates around this wave of urban crime and the reference points drawn in these debates by various actors. These reference points were found to be closely related to the concepts of class and ethnicity and to the accelaration of the spatial segregation along class lines in the 2000's. The transformation of the significance of the issue of urban crime was accompanied by the development of the private security sector. Based on the research conducted for this study, this thesis shows that status and security are complementary elements rather than mutually exclusive factors for the middle classes of Istanbul, who differentiate themselves from the urban poor not only through their socio-economic position, but also through their imagined position in the dichotomy between the criminal and the victim.