Post-Cold War Police Reform and the Transformation of the Modern Political Field: Reflections from Turkey *

Post-Cold War police reform, Turkey representing one of the most featured cases, has been in practice for more than two decades all over the Global South. This reform initiative has been both popularly and academically deemed to be a process of progress and democratization. Nonetheless, especially in the light of events such as Gezi Park Protests, the end results appear to be open to question. Looking more closely, through the lens of “political Marxism,” reveals instead that the post-Cold War era police restructuring is a wholesale neoliberal transformation that redefines the original features of the bourgeois state in favor of capitalist class power. In fact, the neoliberal police reform process un-makes the modern political field on an anti-modern basis. Yet this still-ongoing process is full of self-contradictions and thus conducive to further political crises.