“NEW TURKEY”S MEMORY REGIME: JULY 15TH AS A MEMORY FIGURE

Date

2023-5-15

Author

Özkan, Özge

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This study examines the narrative and cultural memory constructed around the experience of the coup attempt on July 15 in Turkey. Following the event, new conditions emerged from this experience, and a new founding narrative and cultural memory reconstruction process was witnessed. This thesis argues that the AKP government utilized top-down memory-making practices to construct the most significant memory figure of its political memory regime. In this thesis, the conceptualization of memory based on its collective, cultural, and political dimensions. This entire discussion has been conducted over cultural memory carriers and memorization techniques of the narrative. To explore them, one of the significant cultural memory carriers, the Ankara 15 July Democracy Museum, is chosen as a fieldsite to conduct a qualitative study. The thesis adopted the depth hermeneutics as its methodological approach. The top-down memory-building process of political power and the content of the narrative established in this process are reinterpreted by evaluating it in a formal/discursive sense in a socio-historical context. Based on the findings of this field study, it has been concluded that the narrative constructed around the July 15 coup attempt, along with all its reminders and omissions, is constructed as the most significant memory figure of the collective-cultural memory that the government is trying to construct through politicization of memory.

Subject Keywords

cultural and political memory, founding narratives, mnemotechnics, memory figures, museums

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/103130

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis