The political psychology of the state of emergency

A state of emergency is a type of exceptional measure designed to quickly deal with the consequences of violent incidents, disasters and crises. It is positioned somewhere between the legal and the political. While the state of emergency is a situation that derives its source from the constitution, it also has the feature of suspending the law. With this feature, the power of decree-law granted to the executive branch makes it possible to transfer the savings created in the political sphere to the legal dimension. The science of political psychology argues that the reasons for political behavior are not based on a rational basis, and that people's psychological states and cognitive processes should also be taken into account. In this context, it is a multidisciplinary science that examines the changes, transformations and damages that the causes, consequences or implementation of political actions create in individual and social psychology. This study evaluates the general political actions implemented during the state of emergency period on a theoretical basis within the framework of political psychology. The authoritarian positioning of political power facilitates the construction and adoption of an official ideology. Authoritarian character creation becomes possible and political socialization rises on this basis. During the state of emergency, the fact that the government is able to designate its own internal enemy and suspend the law in order to combat the traumatic situation that arises makes the individual and society vulnerable to it. This state of vulnerability is the source of the criminalization activity carried out by the government in accordance with the spirit of the process. As a result of the creation of a society politicized by fear and anxiety, suspicious behavior spreads to the general public. On the other hand, the state of emergency also involves a kind of reconstruction and construction activity. For this reason, political powers can artificially recreate trauma over and over again. According to the Terror Management Theory, this recreation process returns to the current government as support, and the system takes its source of legitimacy from itself. Thus, the political power's process of combating the trauma that caused the State of Emergency leads to the creation of a new trauma.