Social drama, Cultural Trauma and Public Memory. The case of Madimak Massacre in Turkey

Fabio Salomoni

Doctoral thesis

Abstract:

It happens very often to hear In Turkey bitter considerations on how Turkish society is a society without memory compared to the long chain of dramatic events that have characterized its recent and distant history. At the same time, however, the theme of memory, its relationship with ethics and with democratization processes have long entered public discourse and not only in the scientific one. This dissertation deals with the memory of a dramatic event in the history of the country. According to the most current representation, on 2 July 1993 a crowd of fundamentalist fanatics attacked a hotel in which a group of artists belonging to the Alevi religious minority were staying. After a siege that lasted for hours without the police arriving, the hotel was set on fire and the fire caused the death of 37 people. However, there are different variants of this narrative in which the number of victims varies, their identities change up to some versions that deny this event the definition of massacre. This event appears to represent perhaps an example of a difficult past but certainly not a forgotten past. The first objective of this dissertation is to reconstruct how this event has been represented over time and with what variations in the various arenas that make up public memory. This reconstruction also suggests the reasons why this event, in a society that is considered without memory, has nevertheless been the subject of such a large number of representations that have undoubtedly fixed it in the memory of the country's public sphere. The resources provided by cultural sociology for this operation consists in the model of cultural trauma. On a collective level, an event does not have a naturally traumatic character. Its traumatic nature is instead the result of a pure sociological process of reclassification. This trauma process is the product of the work of cultural agents who reclassify the event, attribute it, create new meanings for a community, producing a new narrative that defines victims and perpetrators of the event and also the traumatic consequences it produced on the collective identity. Dramatic power and discursive efficacy are essentially the elements that allow the wider society to identify with this narrative and allow it to be fixed in public memory through museums, monuments and commemorations. While there are many doubts about the fact that Turkish society is a society without memory, it is rather evident that it is a society furrowed by a deep cultural divide or to use a term of great success in the country, characterized by a great polarization - kutuplaşma- political and cultural. In the reconstruction of the trauma process of the Madımak massacre, it therefore becomes crucial to verify whether and under what conditions this narrative trauma can be shared by a society characterized by a low level of cultural complicity. Preliminarily to the reconstruction of the trauma process, this dissertation, however, deals with social events and dramas. Although the event is the heart of any study on the processes of formation of collective or public memory, sociology generally tends to overlook the evidence that the event is first of all a moment full of empirical content. It is precisely the empirical richness that provides resources and material for its representation over time. Preliminarily to the reconstruction of its representations over time, then the massacre event must be reconstructed with regard to its empirical contest. Again the dissertation makes use of the tools of cultural sociology. The event is therefore described as the product of the clash between social performances. This perspective allows to bring to light the complex stratification of facts, meanings and symbols that feed the different narrative traumas. The massacre then, from the following day, turned into a real social drama. That is, it gave birth to a discursive battle, to a clash of interpretations in the media arena that generated a r

Abstract:

eal social crisis. Reconstructing these interpretations allows us to identify the characteristics with which the narratives that have allowed its transmission over time were subsequently formed. From a methodological point of view, this dissertation made use of a range of different techniques. First of all, the analysis of the narratives contained in the galaxy of cultural artifacts with which the event was represented. Firstly, national and local newspapers; about forty books that over time have been published in Turkey by witnesses, survivors and various other cultural agents; television broadcasts produced over time by the main national channels; narratives produced by parliamentary committees and other institutional subjects; the narratives of the event contained in the sentences of the two tribunals that tried to ascertain victims and executioners; Interviews were then carried out with 35 cultural agents, in Sivas, Ankara and Istanbul involved in various capacities in the trauma process: survivors, relatives of the victims, relatives of those condemned, national and local political representatives; managers and militants of associations; journalists and intellectuals. Finally, the methodology also includes participant observation. In particular with regard to an institutional arena, the commemorative one, which turned out to have a fundamental role in the construction of the trauma process. This fieldwork was carried out from 2013 to 2019 at the commemorations in Sivas, and when possible to those organized in Istanbul and Ankara. Using this range of conceptual and methodological tools offered by cultural sociology, this dissertation therefore proposes not to construct hypotheses or to predict outcomes but rather to uncover layers of meaning that help us gain a deeper understanding of significance and consequences. In other words, through the mirror of memory, it aims to bring to light the intimate grammar of Turkish society. Or at least part of it. From a more general point of view, however, the dissertation hopes to bring a modest contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms of the trauma process and in particular to the understanding of the limits and conditions that influence the extension of a narrative trauma to the wider society in a contest characterized by cultural divide and fragile cultural complicity

Abstract:

It happens very often to hear In Turkey bitter considerations on how Turkish society is a society without memory compared to the long chain of dramatic events that have characterized its recent and distant history. At the same time, however, the theme of memory, its relationship with ethics and with democratization processes have long entered public discourse and not only in the scientific one. This dissertation deals with the memory of a dramatic event in the history of the country. According to the most current representation, on 2 July 1993 a crowd of fundamentalist fanatics attacked a hotel in which a group of artists belonging to the Alevi religious minority were staying. After a siege that lasted for hours without the police arriving, the hotel was set on fire and the fire caused the death of 37 people. However, there are different variants of this narrative in which the number of victims varies, their identities change up to some versions that deny this event the definition of massacre. This event appears to represent perhaps an example of a difficult past but certainly not a forgotten past. The first objective of this dissertation is to reconstruct how this event has been represented over time and with what variations in the various arenas that make up public memory. This reconstruction also suggests the reasons why this event, in a society that is considered without memory, has nevertheless been the subject of such a large number of representations that have undoubtedly fixed it in the memory of the country's public sphere. The resources provided by cultural sociology for this operation consists in the model of cultural trauma. On a collective level, an event does not have a naturally traumatic character. Its traumatic nature is instead the result of a pure sociological process of reclassification. This trauma process is the product of the work of cultural agents who reclassify the event, attribute it, create new meanings for a community, producing a new narrative that defines victims and perpetrators of the event and also the traumatic consequences it produced on the collective identity. Dramatic power and discursive efficacy are essentially the elements that allow the wider society to identify with this narrative and allow it to be fixed in public memory through museums, monuments and commemorations. While there are many doubts about the fact that Turkish society is a society without memory, it is rather evident that it is a society furrowed by a deep cultural divide or to use a term of great success in the country, characterized by a great polarization - kutuplaşma- political and cultural. In the reconstruction of the trauma process of the Madımak massacre, it therefore becomes crucial to verify whether and under what conditions this narrative trauma can be shared by a society characterized by a low level of cultural complicity. Preliminarily to the reconstruction of the trauma process, this dissertation, however, deals with social events and dramas. Although the event is the heart of any study on the processes of formation of collective or public memory, sociology generally tends to overlook the evidence that the event is first of all a moment full of empirical content. It is precisely the empirical richness that provides resources and material for its representation over time. Preliminarily to the reconstruction of its representations over time, then the massacre event must be reconstructed with regard to its empirical contest. Again the dissertation makes use of the tools of cultural sociology. The event is therefore described as the product of the clash between social performances. This perspective allows to bring to light the complex stratification of facts, meanings and symbols that feed the different narrative traumas. The massacre then, from the following day, turned into a real social drama. That is, it gave birth to a discursive battle, to a clash of interpretations in the media arena that generated a r

Abstract:

eal social crisis. Reconstructing these interpretations allows us to identify the characteristics with which the narratives that have allowed its transmission over time were subsequently formed. From a methodological point of view, this dissertation made use of a range of different techniques. First of all, the analysis of the narratives contained in the galaxy of cultural artifacts with which the event was represented. Firstly, national and local newspapers; about forty books that over time have been published in Turkey by witnesses, survivors and various other cultural agents; television broadcasts produced over time by the main national channels; narratives produced by parliamentary committees and other institutional subjects; the narratives of the event contained in the sentences of the two tribunals that tried to ascertain victims and executioners; Interviews were then carried out with 35 cultural agents, in Sivas, Ankara and Istanbul involved in various capacities in the trauma process: survivors, relatives of the victims, relatives of those condemned, national and local political representatives; managers and militants of associations; journalists and intellectuals. Finally, the methodology also includes participant observation. In particular with regard to an institutional arena, the commemorative one, which turned out to have a fundamental role in the construction of the trauma process. This fieldwork was carried out from 2013 to 2019 at the commemorations in Sivas, and when possible to those organized in Istanbul and Ankara. Using this range of conceptual and methodological tools offered by cultural sociology, this dissertation therefore proposes not to construct hypotheses or to predict outcomes but rather to uncover layers of meaning that help us gain a deeper understanding of significance and consequences. In other words, through the mirror of memory, it aims to bring to light the intimate grammar of Turkish society. Or at least part of it. From a more general point of view, however, the dissertation hopes to bring a modest contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms of the trauma process and in particular to the understanding of the limits and conditions that influence the extension of a narrative trauma to the wider society in a contest characterized by cultural divide and fragile cultural complicity

Keywords

Cultural Trauma, Public Memory, Turkey, Madimak, Social Drama

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 28. 12. 2020

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 23. 3. 2021
• Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Ing. Radim Marada, Ph.D.
• Reader: Dr. Werner Binder, Prof. Dr. Haldun N. Gülalp

Masaryk University

Faculty of Social Studies

Doctoral programme / field:
Sociology / Sociology