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ABSTRACT
Recent research shows that Turkish society is very polarized and that different identities and ideological perspectives are in constant struggle with each other. In a multicultural society such as Turkey’s, the question of how to think about the relationship between different social groups’ histories of victimization becomes crucial. Following Michael Rothberg’s conceptualization of multi-directional memory – beyond competitive memory, this article presents an archive for comparative work through a data set of novels on the military coups in Turkey. The major argument here is that while these novels are promoting the idea of competitive memory as a zero-sum game, if it is looked at more closely, there are traces of multi-directionality, of ongoing negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. Doing so, it is argued, would help to reframe justice in the society, where different victimizations are not competing with each other, but start to talk to each other. This article is an attempt to create a literary tool of comparison on different stories of victimization as a first step towards transitional justice in a polarized society.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Note on contributors
Çimen Günay-Erkol is an assistant professor of Turkish Literature at Ozyegin University, Istanbul. She got her BS from METU, MA from Bilkent University, and Ph.D. from Leiden University. Her fields of interest include gender and masculinity studies, disability studies, biography, and topics such as testimony and trauma. Recently, Dr Günay-Erkol co-edited Dictionary of Literary Biography 373 (New York: Gale, 2013) and DLB 379 (New York: Gale, 2016) a collection of biographies of novelists in Turkey with Burcu Alkan. Central European University Press published her book Broken Masculinities: Solitude, Alienation, and Frustration in Turkish Literature after 1970 in 2016. She is one of the editors of the journal Masculinities: A Journal of Identity and Culture based in Istanbul. She plans to continue working on trauma and disability.
Deniz Senol-Sert is an associate professor of International Relations at Ozyegin University, Istanbul. Before joining OzU, she was a Senior Research Associate at the Migration Research Center, Koç University, Istanbul. She is a renowned expert on migration issues in Turkey and globally who has taught and conducted research at several institutions domestically and abroad. Deniz received her BA in International Relations from Koç University, an M.Sc. in European Union Policy Making from the London School of Economics, and an M.Phil. in Political Science from the City University of New York. She received her Ph.D. in comparative politics in 2008 from the City University of New York; her thesis was entitled ‘The Property Rights of Conflict-Induced Internally Displaced People: Ideals, Realities, Lessons.’ Her articles have been published in journals such as International Migration, Middle Eastern Studies, New Perspectives on Turkey, and Journal of Refugee Studies.
Notes
1 Further information about the project and the dataset is available at: http://edebiyattadarbe.com/.
2 Halbwachs, On Collective Memory.
3 Ibid., 51.
4 Anderson, Imagined Communities.
5 Nora, Realms of Memory.
6 Rothberg, “Introduction,” 3.
7 Ibid.
8 Assmann and Czaplicka, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” 125.
9 Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory”; Erll, “Literature, Film and the Mediality of Cultural Memory.”
10 After the 1971 intervention, foreign media attention to Turkey increased and a new set of writers became of interest for translators. The prestigious publishing company Flammarion published the French translation of Çetin Altan’s Büyük Gözaltı (1972), as Étroite Surveillance in 1975, when the novel was in its fifth edition in Turkey. Erdal Öz’s popular book Yaralısın (1974) followed in Dutch (Je bent gewond, Ambo, 1988) several years after the second military intervention took place in Turkey. Adalet Ağaoğlu’s Ölmeye Yatmak (1973) was published in German by Unionsverlag (Sich hinlegen und sterben, 2008) and Sevgi Soysal’s Yenişehir’de Bir Öğle Vakti (Noontime in Yenişehir, 2016) was very recently published by Milet Publishing.
11 Weiker, The Turkish Revolution 1960-1961.
12 Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment with Democracy, 127.
13 Heper, “Civil-Military Relations in Turkey,” 248.
14 Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics, 26.
15 Lombardi, “Turkey,” 203.
16 Lipovsky, The Socialist Movement in Turkey, 2.
17 Akça, “Türkiye’de Darbeler, Kapitalizm ve Demokrasi(sizlik),” 49.
18 Örnek, Türkiye’nin Soğuk Savaş Düşünce Hayatı, 175.
19 Sakallıoğlu, “The Anatomy of the Turkish Military's Political Autonomy,” 151.
20 Varol, “The Democratic Coup d’état,” 325.
21 Narlı, “Civil-Military Relations in Turkey,” 113.
22 Bali, Turkish Student's Movements and the Turkish Left in the 1950-1960, 75.
23 Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment with Democracy, 292.
24 Çandar, “A Turk in the Palestinian Resistance,” 69.
25 Bora, “Nationalist Discourses in Turkey,” 450.
26 Landau, Panturkism, 148.
27 Some biographical novels about Prime Minister Adnan Menderes also tried to make use of the return of the Menderes image in Turkey’s political discussions in post-2000: İsa Yılmaz’s Ben Bu Adamı Sevdim (2012) and Melike İlgün’s Bir Başvekil Sevdim (2013) which are melodramatic novels about the love affair between Menderes and Ayhan Aydan contribute to the surge of historical novels.
28 Ironically, one of the novels of the second coup even precedes the second military intervention. Melih Cevdet Anday’s Gizli Emir (1970) depicts intellectuals, in an abstract time and setting, who wait to hear the announcement of the orders of a despotic regime.
29 Çetin Altan’s Büyük Gözaltı (1972) and Bir Avuç Gökyüzü (1974), Füruzan’s 47’liler (1974), Tarık Dursun K.’s Gün Döndü (1974), Erdal Öz’s Yaralısın (1974), Melih Cevdet Anday’s İsa’nın Güncesi (1974) provide minute details of political activism and prison life, elaborating on young people’s engagement with leftist politics. Yılmaz Güney’s Selimiye trio, Salpa, Sanık and Hücrem, which were written between 1971 and 1973, portray the class-conflicts around the war of ideologies with an autobiographical twist. Sevgi Soysal’s Şafak (1975), Emine Işınsu’s Sancı (1975) and Pınar Kür’s Yarın Yarın approach political activism and victimization with a special emphasis on gender.
30 Samim Kocagöz’s Tartışma (1976), Demirtaş Ceyhun’s Yağmur Sıcağı (1976), Demir Özlü’s Bir Uzun Sonbahar (1976), and Oktay Rıfat’s Bir Kadının Penceresinden elaborate on what it means to be a revolutionary, with autobiographical details. Sevinç Çokum’s Zor (1977), Aysel Özakın’s Alnında Mavi Kuşlar (1978), Tarık Buğra’s Gençliğim Eyvah (1979), Demir Özlü’s Bir Küçük Burjuva’nın Gençlik Yılları (1979), Ayla Kutlu’s Kaçış (1979), and Adalet Ağaoğlu’s Bir Düğün Gecesi (1979) discuss the dynamics and the legacy of the second coup in the wake of the third. All of these novels were deliberate efforts to shape memories of the coup in order to contribute to the collective memory of the future generations.
31 Published in 1980, Tezer Özlü’s Çocukluğumun Soğuk Geceleri (1980) signals the more devastating era to come. This novel illustrates the psychological pains of a young girl who grows into womanhood under the pressures of a military dad as a dramatic metaphor for the country’s intelligentsia; Özlü draws parallels between her psychologically distressed persona subjected to electro-shock therapy and political prisoners tortured with electricity. It is the most dramatic example of how political discrepancies disintegrated families and the military state assumed the role of guardianship.
32 Mehmet Eroğlu won a literary prize in 1979 with his testimonial Issızlığın Ortasında but hardly any publisher showed the courage to publish his book. Eroğlu finished his second novel Geç Kalmış Ölü in 1981, but left it unpublished as well. Aysel Özakın’s Genç Kız ve Ölüm (1980) and Erol Toy’s Zor Oyunu (1980) returned to the 1960s–1970s to illustrate the social frustration. Ahmet Altan’s Dört Mevsim Sonbahar and Emine Işınsu Canbaz (1982) explore young people’s obsession from the left and the right with armed activism. Family struggles and the red-hunt of the 1970s formed the basis of Turkey’s Nobel laurate Orhan Pamuk’s Sessiz Ev (1983) and Ayla Kutlu’s Tutsaklar (1983). Eroğlu published both of his novels after the return to democratic politics in 1984.
33 Ahmet Altan’s Sudaki İz (1985), Bilge Karasu’s Gece (1985), Latife Tekin’s Gece Dersleri (1986), Mehmet Eroğlu’s Yarım Kalan Yürüyüş (1986), Samim Kocagöz’s Mor Ötesi (1986), Alev Alatlı’s İşkenceci (1986), Adalet Ağaoğlu Hayır (1987), Ayla Kutlu’s Hoşçakal Umut (1987).
34 Kaan Arsanoğlu’s Devrimciler (1988) and Kimlik (1989) examined the heavy burden on political activists. A. Kadir Konuk’s Sıcak Bir Günün Şafağında (1989), Mehmet Eroğlu’s Adını Unutan Adam (1989), Ümit Kıvanç’s Bekle Dedim Gölgeye (1989), Feride Çiçekoğlu’s Uçurtmayı Vurmasınlar (1989), and Bekir Yıldız’s Darbe (1989) revolve around themes such as uprisings, international links of political activists, comradeship, prison conditions, torture and so on.
35 Yaşar Kaplan’s Sıfır Üç Depremleri (1987), Tarık Buğra’s Dünyanın En Pis Sokağı (1989) also deepened the question of the validity of the leftist victim position as the single example of the post-coup trauma.
36 Ömer Lütfi Mete’s Çığlığın Ardı Çığlık (1989) had neo-nationalists’ pain in prisons after the coup at its explicit focus. Halil Genç’s Koyabilmek Adını (1988), Hüseyin Şimşek’s Ayrımı Bol Bir Yol’da (1988) and Eylül Şifresi (1991), Kaan Arsanoğlu’s Çağrısız Hayalim (1992), Mehmet Eroğlu’s Yürek Sürgünü (1994), Kaan Arsanoğlu’s Kişilikler (1995) explore memories of leftist activism, prison and torture, and also elaborate on the disintegration of the leftist political activists of the 1980s. In M. Naci Bostancı’s Seksenler: Işığın Gölgesi (1996) the victim is also a neo-nationalist.
37 Gürsel Korat’s Ay Şarkısı (1997), Timur Ertekin’s Şamanın Üç Soygunu (1999), and Tahir Abacı’s İkinci Adım (1999) are such examples.
38 Elster, “Coming to Terms with the Past,” 14.
39 Light and Young, “Public Memory, Commemoration, and Transitional Justice,” 233.
40 ibid.
41 Barahona de Brito, “Transitional Justice and Memory.”
42 Barahona De Brito, Gonzalez Enriquez, and Aguilar, The Politics of Memory.
43 Buendía, “Truth in the Time of Fear,” 344.
44 Walker, “Troubles with Truth Commissions.”
45 Lopez, “Legalizing Collective Remembrance after Mass Atrocities.”
46 Tekin, Factories of Memory, 35.
47 Günay-Erkol, Broken Masculinities, 217.
48 Alkan, Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Darbeler.
49 Post-2000 coup novels are diverse in terms of their ideological perspectives and also in terms of the coup they tend to focus on. Ayşe Sarısayın Ansızın Günbatımı (2014), Lütfü Şehsuvaroğlu Kafes (2015), Gün Zileli Çanlar (2016), İskender Pala Karun ve Anarşist (2017) are just a few examples.
50 Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile, xxiix.