Hayal Akarsu Karpuzcu

HAYAL AKARSU KARPUZCU, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands, was approved Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship funding in September 2023 to aid research and writing on “Force Experts: Afterlives of Police Reforms in Turkey.” Police reform is on the global agenda due to proliferating police crises—human rights abuses, juridical harassment, arbitrary killings. Despite extensive investments in community policing, democratic training, and non-lethal technologies, police violence persists. Why? Based on 18 months of fieldwork between 2015-2017, “Force Experts” demonstrates how democratization aspirations provide regimes new toolkits to extend power, manufacture legal impunity, and garner support. The manuscript illustrates how Turkish police adopt transnational standards to redefine violence as expertise — becoming force experts. It argues that reform operates as security technology, not outside it, fashioning governmental technologies that transform everyday security experiences. The fieldwork followed Turkish Police Academy trainees, observed reform networks in Ankara, London, and Belfast, and accompanied police in communities. “Force Experts” combines anthropology of experts and techno-political governance with studies of power and violence, contributing to literature on populist authoritarianism and broader security studies.