Abstract
“Mafia” is a common, even banal, term in public debate in Turkey today. Many NGOs and media sources warn against “mafia” groups running rife in a variety of different domains.2 At the end of 1998, the department of the Istanbul Police dealing with organized crime and arms trafficking set up a “hello-mafia” hotline for people denouncing extortionist activities. The crowning “glory” of this development was the enormous success of the 2002 television series Kurtlar Vadisi (Valley of the Wolves),3 which presents a romanticized depiction of the world of the baba; it attracted a large following and even led to some imitations. More generally, the media use the term “mafia” in both an inflationist and a sensationalist way, qualifying any delinquent activity as “mafia-esque.” This both trivializes the term and contributes to the dilution and confusion of the phenomenon itself.
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Notes
Andrew Finkel, “Who Guards the Turkish Press? A Perspective on Press Corruption in Turkey,”Journal of International Affairs54(1) (2000): 147–168.
Similar challenges were raised concerning the Turkish Hizbullah, by Gilles Dorronsoro. La mouvance Hizbullah(Istanbul: Les dossiers de l’IFEA, 2003).
Hamit Bozarslan, “Le camion et les chars: une année de pouvoir islamiste en Turquie,” Les Annales de l’Autre Islam6 (1999): 317–325.
Hamit Bozarslan, “La crise comme instrument politique en Turquie,” Esprit1 (2001): 145–151.
Martin Van Bruinessen, “The Nature and Uses of Violence in the Kurdish Conflict,” contribution presented at the international conference Ethnic Construction and Political Violence(Cortona: July 2–3, 1999).
Martin Van Bruinessen, “Les Kurdes, Etats et tribus,” Etudes kurdes1 (2000): 9–31.
Hamit Bozarslan, “Kurdistan: économie de guerre, économie dans la guerre,” in François Jean and Jean-Christophe Rufin (eds.). Economie des guerres civiles(Paris: Hachette, 1996), 138.
Hamit Bozarslan. From Political Struggle to Self-sacrifice. Three Essays on Violence in the Middle East(Princeton: Rynner, 2002).
Orhan Gӧkdemir. Pike. Bir polis sefin kisa tarihi[Pike. The Brief History of a Chief of Police] (Istanbul: Civiyazilan, 2001), 129.
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© 2010 Jean-Louis Briquet and Gilles Favarel-Garrigues
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Massicard, E. (2010). “Gangs in Uniform” in Turkey: Politics at the Articulation between Security Institutions and the Criminal World. In: Briquet, JL., Favarel-Garrigues, G. (eds) Organized Crime and States. The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230110038_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230110038_3
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