Turkey’s memory politics in transformation: Akp’s new and old Turkey

Abstract

The story of establishment of Turkish nation-state as the remnant of Ottoman Empire is, at the same time, the story of an ongoing struggle of collective memory. The new Turkish nation state required a new national identity, which would unify and homogenize the society. To accomplish this task, the founders of the republic deployed methods of social engineering. They rephrased history. They invented suitable traditions for the new national identity in addition to the new myths, legends, cults and symbols. So, “as the ones who control wealth and the state also control the knowledge, they define what is acceptable as knowledge about heritage, and they withhold recognition from anything else” (Herzfeld, 2015:10). Thus, some aspects of the past had to be societally forgotten whilst their vacancy was tired to be filled by new traditions, symbols and myths. Until the end of the twentieth century, official Kemalist collective consciousness did not face any challenge big enough to overthrow the historical and ideological bases of secular Turkish republic neither from the society nor from the military. Yet, starting from the 80s changes in social, structural, technological and economical environments brought about vital alterations in the means and scope of political struggle. Hereafter, while new transportation and communication facilities were enabling new social groups to get organized for a cause, traditional left and right struggles were fading away from the political arena. When it was 90s, the institutional, political and economic upheavals, caused by the collapse of bipolar world order, had to face nation states with legitimacy crisis, accompanied with the economical and political crisis. Therefore, there was a suitable environment for oppositional groups aiming to have more efficiency in political arena. Consequently, oppositional groups benefitted from the legitimacy crisis and they revised official history in a practical way for their causes.