Social Unrest and American Military Bases in Turkey and Germany since 1945

Amy Austin Holmes

May 2014 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

Over the past century, the United States has created a global network of military bases. While the force structure offers protection to US allies, it maintains the threat of violence toward others, both creating and undermining security. Amy Austin Holmes argues that the relationship between the US military presence and the non-US citizens under its security umbrella is inherently contradictory. She suggests that while the host population may be fully enfranchised citizens of their own government, they are at the same time disenfranchised vis-à-vis the US presence. This study introduces the concept of the 'protectariat' as they are defined not by their relationship to the means of production, but rather by their relationship to the means of violence. Focusing on Germany and Turkey, Holmes finds remarkable parallels in the types of social protest that occurred in both countries, particularly non-violent civil disobedience, labor strikes of base workers, violent attacks and kidnappings, and opposition parties in the parliaments.

About the author

Amy Austin Holmes is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo and Postdoctoral Fellow of International Studies at Brown University's Watson Institute. She received her PhD from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Freie Universität Berlin. Her work has been published in Mobilization, the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, the Baltimore Sun and Ahram Online, and by the Atlantic Council. Her research interests include social movements, revolutions, critical security studies and US foreign policy in Europe and the Middle East.