Is Turkey coming to terms with its past? Politics of memory and majoritarian conservatism

Abstract

There is unprecedented domestic and international interest in Turkey's political past, accompanied by a societal demand for truth and justice in addressing past human rights violations. This article poses the question: Is Turkey coming to terms with its past? Drawing upon the literature on nationalism, identity, and collective memory, I argue that the Turkish state has recently taken steps to acknowledge and redress some of the past human rights violations. However, these limited and strategic acts of acknowledgment fall short of initiating a more comprehensive process of addressing past wrongs. The emergence of the Justice and Development Party as a dominant political force brings along the possibility that the discarded Kemalist memory framework will be replaced by what I call majoritarian conservatism, a new government-sanctioned shared memory that promotes uncritical and conservative-nationalist interpretations of the past that have popular appeal, while enforcing silence on critical historiographies that challenge this hegemonic memory and identity project. Nonetheless, majoritarian conservatism will probably fail to assert state control over memory and history, even under a dominant government, as unofficial memory initiatives unsettle the hegemonic appropriation of the past.

Keywords:

• Turkey
• memory
• majoritarian conservatism

Notes

I understand Kemalism as a heterogeneous set of political and social views that had their origins in the modernization discourse of the late Ottoman Empire, were solidified as official ideology during Atatürk's rule (1923–1938), and have retained their centrality to this day.

On how the legacy of World War II is narrated among conservative and leftist Italian politicians and intellectuals, for example, see Portelli (2003).

See for example Akçam (2004).

For analyses of Kemalist ideology, see Davison (2003) and Parla (1992).

Both in his lifetime and beyond, different names were used to refer to him: Mustafa Kemal, Mustafa Kemal Paşa, Gazi Mustafa Kemal, Kemal, and his self-selected last name after 1934, Atatürk (literally “Father-Turk”). Each name emphasizes a particular aspect of his public life, and therefore serves as an indication of memory politics around his legacy. I use Atatürk because it is the name most widely used to refer to him.

Özyürek notes that “in the 1990s Islamist and secularist groups utilized different discourses of modernity in order to prove themselves modern – and thus legitimate – portraying others as non-modern” (2006, 19).

Both former foreign minister Ali Babacan and his successor, Ahmet Davutoğlu, have rejected the term “neo-Ottomanism” (“The Davutoğlu effect: All change for foreign policy,” The Economist, 21 October 2010).

Governors in Turkey are centrally appointed and work under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior.

Source: Collective Memory Platform (http://www.collectivememoryplatform.com/default1.asp?l=en&kid=2&lid=1).

For example, the government purchased in 2010 the property on which the Sivas Massacre happened, but progress on the museum has been disappointing so far. Journalists and civil-society activists point to the possibility that former prisons might be demolished to build private premises, such as hotels, to efface historical memory (“Cezaevleri ‘yüzleşme müzesi’ olsun,” Radikal, 27 September 2010).

The website (http://www.ozurbekliyorum.com) claims to have reached 202,205 co-signatories as of March 2012, but only 205 names are publicly available there.