The socio-political construction of security culture: The case of Turkey

Security is considered one of the fundamental duties of states to protect and sustain their assets. This situation shows that security is a determining factor that guides all state policies and activities. As a result of a literature review, it has been observed that there is an interaction between the security policies of states and the culture of society, and that studies on this topic have been explained using the concepts of "Political Culture" and "Strategic Culture". While "Political Culture" is used to describe a society's political preferences and behaviors, "Strategic Culture" is employed to make predictions about how socio-political constructs reflect in states' foreign policies. However, since both concepts neglect the root causes of the interaction between state, society, and culture based on social psychology in their explanations, the concept of "Security Culture" has been preferred in this study. In this context, it is believed that security culture emerges as a result of a socialization process. This process has two dimensions of construction: sociological and political. "Social or Cognitive Perception", "Schismogenesis or the Pygmalion Effect", and "Cultural Differences" are the socio-psychological factors that shape security culture. On the other hand, "Securitization", "Emancipation" and "Bandwagoning" form the political construction dimension of security culture. Accordingly, the primary aim of this study is to explain this theoretical framework drawn around the concept of "Security Culture". Another aim of the study is to concretize the explained theoretical framework through the example of "Turkey and Turkish Foreign/Security Policy. In this regard, security theories and social psychology will be utilized to form the theoretical part of the study. In the first stage, a synthesis will be made between the assumptions of these two fields that are related to the subject. In the second stage, Turkey's foreign/security policies will be the focus to reveal the practical validity of the theoretical framework.