The Turkish Yearbook of International Relations (Milletlerarası Münasebetler Türk Yıllığı)

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Safe area theory and practice: security for civilians or creating new states of exception during humanitarian crises?
(Ankara Üniversitesi Siyasal Bilimler Fakültesi, 2021) Turan, Gözde; Other; Other
Drawing on the notion of “safe area” not only as a geographical but also a social construct, this article argues that the efforts of aiding civilians at risk through confining them to bordered areas increase the insecurities experienced both inside and outside of these areas by multiple actors. Exemplifying four cases – Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Syria – it revokes Agamben’s concept of homo sacer to display how the civilians are reduced to bare lives who are excluded from the political sphere and whose killing has been excluded from political and judicial scrutiny. A comparative study on the four situations indicates widening and deepening insecurities for the civilian populations who lose their manoeuvre capacity to respond to security threats and who become dependent particularly on external aid to survive. While revisiting the main causes of failure to protect civilians at risk during armed conflicts, the article suggests that safe areas should be treated as spatial domains with multiple actors holding competing concerns and interests, and encourages reconsideration of the implications of constructing confined spaces during humanitarian crises without full political and military commitment and liability.