“Innocently Policing”: an Ethnographic Analysis of the Police-Public Relationship in Artvin

This article seeks to investigate the police-public relation in artvin, a very small city at the northeastern part of turkey with a very low statistics of criminal inci-dents and a unique culture. to this end, the social memory of the public and the impact of the political and cultural aspects of the public on the policing style is attempted to be scrutinized. in a sense, the study challenges the prevalent argument that policing style is the main determinant of the police-public relations, and argues, in line with the struc-tural/political theory, that the political and cultural context should be comprehended in order to understand the police-public relationship.