‘As Long as the Internet Lasts’: Harnessing the Digital Turn in Turkish-Australian Gallipoli Centenary Commemorations

ABSTRACT

Intensified commemorations and funding opportunities during the centenary of the Great War, combined with the enabling potential of digital media, led multiple community members and artists to imagine new commemorative projects. Focusing on two digital commemorative projects produced in Sydney and dedicated to the Turkish-Australian remembrance of Gallipoli, this research will give a glimpse of a dynamic society’s attempts to revisit the remembrance of a shared past. Relying mainly on the explanations of the creators of the two digital projects and examination of the exhibits, this paper argues that these centenary projects reflect the changing relationship to a past that is no longer in living memory in an increasingly culturally diverse society and that these recent commemorations ultimately reassess the definition of publicly and nationally significant local heritage.

KEYWORDS:

• Gallipoli
• centenary
• digital media
• commemoration
• cultural diversity
• Turkish-Australian

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Saluting Their Service Commemorative Grants Program run by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs is the most significant example. https://www.dva.gov.au/about-us/overview/consultations-and-grants/grants-and-bursaries/saluting-their-service-commemorative.

2 This research has been conducted with the approval from the University of Technology Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (UTS HREC REF NO. ETH18-3102). My analysis is based on interviews with Mine Konakci and Victoria Harbutt and participant observation in various commemorative events in Sydney. I have also witnessed various stages of all four projects as an observer, or contributor in the case of Johnnies and Mehmets. I conducted the interviews in 2018, three years after the completion of the projects, allowing time for the interviewees to reflect on the outcomes of their projects.

3 Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours … You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

4 The original research was done by the Turkish journalist Cengiz Ozakinci and publicised in Australia mainly by the Honest History group through their website and articles in other media outlets referencing that website. See (Stanley and Stephens 2014; Stephens 2015b; Daley 2015b).

5 There was a petition on Change.org and protest letters. See, for instance, the protest letter that Mode of Life invites its readers to email to various politicians and media outlets. The letter is typical of the local Armenian and Greek media coverage that depicted Ataturk as a particularly sinister figure, comparable to Hitler. http://modeoflife.org/protest-letter-against-the-mustapha-kemal-monument-in-hyde-park%E2%80%8F/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Burcu Cevik-Compiegne

Burcu Cevik-Compiegne is a lecturer at the Australian National University, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies and the Convenor of Turkish Studies. She obtained her BA and MA degrees at Aix-Marseille University and PhD at University of Technology Sydney focusing on Turkish and Indian experiences and remembrance of the First World War. Diasporic memory, social and cultural history and cultural identity are common threads between her research projects.