Congratulations to Dr. Serdar San, who successfully defended his doctoral thesis “Policing and Police Reform in Turkey since 1980: Regime Transitions and Policing Transformations,” on August 1st, 2023. Serdar’s thesis was passed “as it stands.”
Serdar’s thesis analyzes the evolution of the Turkish National Police through several major political changes over the last 40 years, including the transition from military to civilian rule in the early 1980s and the more recent establishment of an authoritarian regime under the leadership of President Recep Erdogan. Serdar finds that the police managed to carve out a highly autonomous role, and even influenced the course of political change in Turkey far more than has been recognized to date. The study will interest scholars and policy-makers concerned with “democratic policing” and the role of the police in politics more broadly.
As supervisor, Professor Matt Light would like to thank the members of the examining committee, including Professor Andy Aydin-Aitchison, University of Edinburgh Faculty of Law (External Examiner); Professor Filiz Kahraman, Department of Political Science (Arm’s-Length Internal Examiner); Professor Beatrice Jauregui, CrimSL; and Professor Mariana Prado, Faculty of Law.
Serdar will join the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at Texas A&M University-Commerce as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice, starting in fall 2023.