Territorial security walls, sovereignty, and the reconstruction of the nation-state

Abstract

High-tech security walls and fences have been two popular security mechanisms that have been employed in different parts of the world. The Turkish-Syrian border and borderland have been one of those critical cases that require a closer scrutiny, especially since it is understudied. This chapter aims to fill this gap by analyzing the creation of the Turkish security wall as a re-inscription of the sovereignty and power of the contemporary Turkish nation-state. It argues that the wall is not only a physical and militarized intervention that territorially separates Turkey from Syria and subverts centuries-old kin, tribal and religious networks of ties among people residing in the region; it is also a symbolic device and apparatus that reverberates a new epistemic and ontological paradigm in the region. The wall projects Turkey’s political, historical, cultural, and economic interests in the region, along with fears, anxieties, and frustrations towards strengthening regional and cross-border ethnic-nationalist and sectarian mobilizations. This chapter also claims that the newly erected the Turkish security wall(s) should be seen as another layer of security for the European border regime, aggressively filtering the transitions of unwanted mobilization of human subjects from the Turkish-Syrian border into the EU territories.