Digital Fight Against Covid-19 and The “New Normal” for Security Institutions

Beyond its medical aspects, the Covid-19 pandemic provides a suitable atmosphere for significant changes in terms of the international security agenda, the future of the international system, relations between the hegemon and potential challengers, and cyber security. In addition to that, it has brought about some results such as some national and/or regional security mechanisms utilizing new instruments or tailoring the old ones to the current situation, and/or employing their current operational capacity to pandemicrelated actions. The situation, which has emerged due to the growing area of interest of security for the first time in the last century, encompasses human health in a serious and global manner and will have ramifications. Considering the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic on the traditional subjects of Security Studies, it is likely that health-related and biological risks will take place in the agenda of, not only healthrelated national, regional and global actors, but also all national and international organizations, as a much more important and prioritized issue in the post-Covid-19 period. Therefore, as of its current progress, the Covid-19 pandemic constitutes the agenda of, not only the health institutions of states, but also the security institutions.

Lockdown measures have been adopted to different degrees all around the world as the Covid-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic and the number of infections and the death toll rapidly increased. This article mainly discusses the way that states transform their capabilities and diversify their instruments against current challenges.

Even though some prominent countries had predesigned measures and a general action plan against disease outbreaks, the struggle against the Covid-19 pandemic has been more difficult than expected. The reasons for this are the difficulty in the execution of such plans, problems about timing, and the unprecedentedly rapid spread of the Covid-19 disease, which has been more than the plans had foreseen. The concerns, which are arising from the possibility that the outbreak would overcome the medical capabilities of countries, have aggravated the scale of the threats and take place on the agenda of many sectors as well as the health sector. Similar concerns about a possible increase in the healthrelated security risks that are likely to emerge unless the outbreak is stopped, have brought the Covid-19 pandemic as an item to the top of the agenda in the security domain and security institutions.