Rethinking the Concept of Threat: Threat Studies and the Limits of Security

Year 2025, Volume: 7 Issue: 2, 148 - 178, 07.10.2025

Mehmet Recai Uygur , Fatma Sever

https://doi.org/10.53451/ijps.1683424

Abstract

This paper lays out Threat Studies as an emerging sub-discipline of International Relations and Security Studies. It breaks from the conventional reactive, state-centric approaches that dominate Security Studies by proposing an interdisciplinary model that, instead, analyzes how threats are constructed, perceived, and mobilized politically, economically, technologically, and environmentally. Drawing upon critical perspectives, discourse and political psychology, systems theory, and integration theory, the study argues that threats do not simply exist; they are crafted socially and politically, usually as mechanisms of domination, exclusion, and securitization. By analyzing the ontological and epistemological questions regarding threats, the paper provides a bounded classification distinguishing between material versus perceived threats, and direct versus indirect threats. The paper defends Threat Studies as an intellectually and strategically pertinent innovation that shifts security from militaristic reaction to ethical and preventive engagement with the causes of instability in a hyperconnected world.

Keywords

Threat Studies , Securitization , Interdisciplinary Security , Integrated Threat

Rethinking the Concept of Threat: Threat Studies and the Limits of Security

Abstract

Bu makale, Uluslararası İlişkiler ve Güvenlik Çalışmaları alanlarında ortaya çıkan yeni bir alt disiplin olarak Tehdit Çalışmaları’nı ortaya koymaktadır. Güvenlik Çalışmaları’nda egemen olan geleneksel, tepki odaklı ve devlet merkezli yaklaşımlardan koparak; tehditlerin nasıl inşa edildiğini, nasıl algılandığını ve siyasi, ekonomik, teknolojik ve çevresel boyutlarda nasıl seferber edildiğini analiz eden disiplinlerarası bir model önermektedir. Eleştirel perspektiflerden, söylem ve siyasal psikolojiden, sistem teorisinden ve entegrasyon teorisinden yararlanan çalışma, tehditlerin basitçe var olmadığını; sosyal ve siyasal olarak, genellikle tahakküm, dışlama ve güvenlikleştirme mekanizmaları olarak kurgulandığını savunmaktadır. Tehditlere ilişkin ontolojik ve epistemolojik soruları ele alarak, maddi ve algısal tehditler ile doğrudan ve dolaylı tehditler arasında sınırlı bir sınıflandırma sunmaktadır. Makale, güvenliği militarist tepkiden çıkarıp etik ve önleyici bir angajmana dönüştürerek, istikrarsızlığın nedenlerine hiperbağlantılı bir dünyada yaklaşmayı amaçlayan Tehdit Çalışmaları’nı entelektüel ve stratejik açıdan önemli bir yenilik olarak savunmaktadır.

Keywords

Tehdit Çalışmaları , Güvenlikleştirme , Disiplinlerarası Güvenlik , Bütünleşik Tehdit

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