International Relations 1–21 © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0047117814562219 ire.sagepub.com Security and citizenship in the global South: In/securing citizens in early republican Turkey (1923–1946) Pinar Bilgin and Basak Ince Bilkent University Abstract The relationship between security and citizenship is more complex than media portrayals based on binary oppositions seem to suggest (included/excluded, security/insecurity), or mainstream approaches to International Relations (IR) and security seem to acknowledge. This is particularly the case in the post-imperial and/or postcolonial contexts of global South where the transition of people from subjecthood to citizenship is better understood as a process of in/securing. For, people were secured domestically as they became citizens with access to a regime of rights and duties. People were also secured internationally as citizens of newly independent ‘nation-states’ who were protected against interventions and/or ‘indirect rule’ by the (European) International Society, whose practices were often justified on grounds of the former’s ‘failings’ in meeting the so-called ‘standards of civilization’. Yet, people were also rendered insecure as they sought to approximate and/or resist the citizen imaginaries of the newly established ‘nation-states’. The article illustrates this argument by looking at the case of Turkey in the early Republican era (1923–1946). Keywords citizenship, global South, International Society, security, standards of civilization, Turkey Introduction The relationship between security and citizenship is more complex than media portrayals based on binary oppositions seem to suggest (included/excluded, security/insecurity), or mainstream approaches to International Relations (IR) and security seem to acknowl- edge (insecurity originates from outside the state boundaries, and states provide security Corresponding author: Pinar Bilgin, Bilkent University, 6800 Ankara, Turkey. Email: pbilgin@bilkent.edu.tr 562219IRE 0 0 10.1177/0047117814562219International RelationsBilgin and Ince research-article 2014 Article by guest on December 20, 2014 ire.sagepub.com Downloaded from