BETTER LATE THAN NEVER: MODERN TURKEY REMEMBERS ITS PAST
by Leyla Neyzi
Monthly Review
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Nov 3 2008
VA
Esra Ozyurek, ed. The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey. Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 2006. x + 225 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN
978-0-8156-3131-6.
The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey, edited by Esra Ozyurek, an
associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University
of California San Diego, has its origins in a book in Turkish edited
by Ozyurek in 2001. Another related book, Nostalgia for the Modern:
State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey, based on Ozyurek’s
dissertation, was published in 2006. Taken together, these books
make an important contribution to the previously scant literature
on memory in Turkey. Until the 1980s, there was little interest in
the public sphere in history and memory in Turkey, where history
was understood to stand for national/official history, and personal
and communal memory, in so far as they diverged from history with a
capital H, were relegated to the relative safety of the home or were
even silenced therein.1 Rejecting the Ottoman past, despite the fact
that most of its cadres emerged from among the Committee of Union
and Progress that turned everyday life in
Anatolia into tragedy during World War I, the new Turkish Republic
focused on the future in its attempts to achieve modernity.2 The
interdisciplinary literature on memory was only recently discovered
by young critical scholars studying abroad in the last decades. This
coincided with a slow but gradual democratization of Turkish society
and the beginnings of a debate on history and memory in the public
sphere.3
Eighty-five years after the founding of the Turkish Republic, the
legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), the hero of the Turkish
War of Independence and the country’s first president, is beginning to
be discussed in the public sphere in a highly emotional debate. As a
result, a number of recent historical events and issues have come out
of the closet. These include intercommunal violence between Turks and
Armenians, the transfer of the Armenian population from Anatolia by the
Ottoman state in 1915 (tehcir), and the ensuing mass destruction of the
Armenian population; the Greco-Turkish War, followed by intercommunal
violence and the forced exchange of populations in 1923; the process of
construction of Turkish national identity, secularization, and state
administration of the Islamic religion; and the status, treatment,
and experience of minorities under the Turkish Republic (Kurds, Alevis,
Armenians, Greek-Orthodox, Jews, Assyrians, and Yezidis, among others),
including Kurdish uprisings, transfer of populations and violence, the
separate conscription and unequal taxation of non-Muslims during World
War II, attacks on non-Muslims instigated by the state in Edirne in
the 1930s and in Istanbul in 1955, and the forced expulsion of Greeks
in 1964. Most recently, the conflict between the Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK) and the Turkish army since the 1980s led to large-scale
forced transfer of populations and an exponential rise in violence,
including the disappearance and deaths of civilians, guerillas, and
military personnel.4 Unfortunately, the superficial and manipulative
use of these issues in international politics and the global media
only solidify the defensive attitude of representatives of the Turkish
state, making it more difficult to institutionalize democracy and open
channels of communication among diverse groups within society. It is
in the current context of categorical black-and-white thinking and
a highly polarized debate concerning identity that there is greater
need than ever for nuanced academic analyses of history and memory
in Turkey.
Ozyurek’s recent work contextualizes current debates in Turkey
within the wider literature on the subject. In her brief editor’s
introduction to Politics of Public Memory in Turkey, Ozyurek refers,
in particular, to the modernist vision of Kemalism, which is being
debated four generations later. Kemalism refers to the ideology of
Ataturk, the cult leader of modern Turkey. According to this vision,
Turkey would be a modern republic, which necessitated the creation
of a new national identity and a distinct rupture with the Ottoman
Empire. Confirming that the peoples of Turkey are finally remembering
their history, she suggests that the past is used by individuals
and groups in the present to express their identities and further
their diverse cultural and political projects. An important aspect of
memory discussed by Ozyurek is commodification through the heritage
and nostalgia industries, as in the case of the marketing of symbols
of the past and of the city of Istanbul itself since the 1990s.
Politics of Public Memory in Turkey consists of seven essays, four
of which were included in an earlier form in the book edited by
Ozyurek in 2001 (essays by Aslı Gur, Nazlı Okten, Cihan Tugal, and
Aslı Igsız). In a new contribution for this volume, Kimberly Hart
suggests, in "Weaving Modernity, Commercializing Carpets: Collective
Memory and Contested Tradition in Orselli Village," that rug-weaving
villagers in Turkey embrace modernity and national identity while
producing commodities, which, ironically, represent "tradition"
for the urban middle class. Hart argues that the people of Turkey,
at least in the rural West, culturally embrace a practical present-
and future-oriented vision, supporting through their agency the rapid
socioeconomic transformation of the country.
Gur’s article, "Stories in Three Dimensions: Narratives of the Nation
and the Anatolian Civilizations Museum," is based on a study that
asked whether official representations of the past in the Anatolian
Civilizations Museum in Ankara were meaningful to ordinary people. Gur
argues that while the Turkish state used archaeology to represent
official history in the museum, the degree to which patrons of the
museum identified with this narrative varied by class (specifically,
education and urban/rural status). The focus on representation in
museums is important: since 1990, another indicator of the new interest
in the past has been the establishment of a number of privately funded
museums. Of particular importance for the present would be a study
that compares the representational strategies of privately funded
museums with those of the older, state-funded museums.
Another look at archaeology is found in Ayfer Bartu Candan’s
contribution, "Remembering a Nine-Thousand-Year-Old Site: Presenting
Catalhöyuk." Analyzing the way the heritage site Catalhöyuk in
central Anatolia is represented by the Turkish state, archaeologists,
villagers, New Age groups, artists, and producers of artifacts for
tourism, Candan suggests that it is the unequal power relations among
these diverse groups that influence the persuasiveness of different
narratives of the site in the present.
In "An Endless Death and an Eternal Mourning: November 10 in Turkey,"
Okten focuses on the commemoration of the death of Ataturk since
November 10, 1938. Based on interviews with citizens who remember
him, she argues that the sacralization of Ataturk and continual
mourning have made it difficult for Turkish society to freely debate
the past. While Okten suggests that middle-class citizens have
largely internalized official narratives about Ataturk, the possible
discontinuities and contradictions within life story narratives of
elites, changes in these narratives over time, and comparison of
these narratives with those of other groups in society may raise new
questions about the remembering/commemoration of Ataturk in Turkey.
In "Public Memory as Political Battleground: Islamist Subversions of
Republican Nostalgia," Ozyurek shows how the Islamist media differently
represents the 1920s in line with their contemporary vision and
political aim of providing an alternative — though equally homogeneous
and dominant — narrative to that of the secularist narrative. In
addition to showing different readings of the same past, this essay
suggests that despite their seeming polarization, the secularist
and Islamist elites resemble one another in their refusal to accept
alternative visions of society, including alternative histories of
the nation.
In "Memories of Violence: The 1915 Massacres and the Construction
of Armenian Identity," Tugal uses Armenian memoirs to comment on
the construction of Armenian history and identity by the Armenian
diaspora. Tugal suggests that autobiographies contain internal
contradictions not found in nationalist narratives, which point to
the complex relations of Anatolian Armenians and Turks who shared
everyday life and a history in their homeland for generations before
nationalism and international intervention led to unprecedented
violence. Underscoring the difference between history and memory,
Tugal argues that sense memory may represent the irrationality and
meaningless of violence.
In "Polyphony and Geographic Kinship in Anatolia: Framing the
Turkish-Greek Compulsory Population Exchange," Igsız focuses on
the recent nostalgia about the forced population exchange between
Greece and Turkey in 1923. Focusing on such cultural products as books
and music, she argues that it is the shared spatial identity between
Turks and Greeks that is emphasized by those attempting to surpass the
polarization based on national identity. Like Ozyurek, Igsız reminds
us that the study of memory must also treat nostalgia, heritage,
and the commodification of memory by the culture industry. What
is particularly ironic in the Turkish case is that these products
for sale in the capitalist marketplace may be simultaneously deemed
"dangerous," resulting in various forms of censorship, where the
distribution of particular products may be prohibited and their
producers taken to court and sentenced.
The most important contribution of this volume is that it introduces
contemporary debates on history and memory in Turkey and the voices
of a new generation of critical young scholars to an international
audience. While recent historical events and issues in the late
Ottoman and early republican period have been treated by historians and
political scientists, the view from memory studies is significant. The
book touches on some of the main events and issues currently debated
in Turkey, including the history and memory of 1915, the legacy of
Ataturk, including modernity and secularism, and the representation of
history through cultural means, such as archaeology, museums, books,
and music. However, in its focus on representation, the book gives
short shrift to individual and communal experience as expressed in
oral history narratives. While the essays contribute to understanding
the Turkish context, Tugal’s study is the only one that uses the
Turkish case to make a theoretical contribution to the literature
on memory. Given that earlier work which focused on the opposition
between history and memory is giving way to an appreciation of their
interpenetration in a new interdisciplinary field, Tugal’s distinction
between history and memory may not be terribly useful. However, his
focus on the contradictions in autobiographical narratives and on
sense memory complicates an era and event that have been excessively
politicized and oversimplified in the literature.
It is unfortunate that the book lacks a conclusion; it would have been
useful to discuss future directions for memory work in Turkey at a
time when the field is rapidly expanding. Nevertheless, Politics of
Public Memory in Turkey is a pioneering work that opens the way for
new interdisciplinary and comparative research on Turkey that will
contribute to the theoretical and methodological literature on memory.
Notes
1 For an example of such silences, see Leyla Neyzi, "Remembering to
Forget: Sabbateanism, National Identity and Subjectivity in Turkey,"
Comparative Studies in Society and History 44, no. 1 (January 2002):
137-158.
2 Sibel Bozdogan and ReÅ~_at Kasaba, eds., Rethinking Modernity and
National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1997).
3 See the recent special issue on memory in New Perspectives in Turkey
34 (Spring 2006).
4 See Hans-Lukas Kieser, ed., Turkey beyond Nationalism: Towards
Post-Nationalist Identities (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006).
Leyla Neyzi is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Social
Sciences at Sabancı University in Istanbul. This review was first
published on H-Memory (October 2008) under a Creative Commons 3.0
US License.
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