1887
Volume 20, Issue 6
  • ISSN 1569-2159
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9862
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

Abstract

Contemporary Turkey has gone through many reforms that have been legitimized by country’s historical legacy. The constitutive elements of this legacy are images, historical figures, events, and symbolisms embedded in memory. It is through those elements that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party sets himself up as the appropriate narrator and appropriate doer, incrementally gaining an upper hand in the legitimacy struggles by telling stories from history, emerging as the new founding father of Turkey and introducing new policies rooted in the legacy of the past. How has he been able to occupy such a position of superiority through the struggles for legitimacy in Turkish politics? This paper critically argues that Erdoğan first set up his personality, imposing himself as the most appropriate narrator and finally showing himself to be the most appropriate doer, by crafting his political communication with symbols and figures from history.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/jlp.19076.cak
2021-04-20
2025-02-07
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Akgündüz, Ahmet, Said Öztürk, and Yaşar Baş
    2006Ayasofya Mosque: From Church to Museum. Istanbul: The Ottoman Research Foundation.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Cagaptay, Soner
    2017The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey. Bloomsbury Publishing. 10.5040/9781350988972
    https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350988972 [Google Scholar]
  3. Calhoun, Craig
    1991 “Morality, Identity, and Historical Explanation: Charles Taylor on the Sources of the Self. Sociological Theory,” 9(2),232. doi:  10.2307/202087
    https://doi.org/10.2307/202087 [Google Scholar]
  4. Cassirer, Ernst
    1955The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol.146. New Haven, USA: Yale University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Dressler, Markus, and Arvind Mandair
    eds. 2011Secularism and Religion-making. Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Hałas, Elżbieta
    2010 “Symbolic Construction of ‘Solidarity’: The Conflict of Interpretations and the Politics of Memory,” Polish Sociological Review170:219–232. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41275150
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü
    2006Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyet’e zihniyet, siyaset ve tarih. [Mentality, Politics and History: From Ottoman Empire to Republic] Vol.273. İstanbul:Bağlam Yayıncılık.
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger
    eds. 1983The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Holly, A. Shissler
    2003Between Two Empires: Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey. London: IB Tauris Co. Ltd, 653.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Jansen, Robert. S.
    2007 “Resurrection and Appropriation: Reputational Trajectories, Memory Work, and the Political Use of Historical Figures,” American Journal of Sociology112:953–1007. 10.1086/508789
    https://doi.org/10.1086/508789 [Google Scholar]
  11. Kahraman, Kemal
    2002 “Kuntay, Mithat Cemal,” TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Kane, Anne
    2017Constructing Irish National Identity: Discourse and Ritual During the Land War, 1879–1882. Berlin, Germany: Springer.
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Karpat, Karpat. H.
    2001The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Le Goff, Jacques
    1992History and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Mango, Andrew
    . Ataturk. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press 2000.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Mümeyyiz
    Mümeyyiz, October15 1869 (1):3
  17. Özekmekçi, M. İnanç
    2012 “Türk Sağında Ayasofya İmgesi [The Image of Hagia Sophia in Turkish Right Wing Parties]”, InTürk Sağı: Mitler, Fetişler, Düşman İmgeleri, [Turkish Right Wing Parties: Myths, Fetishes, Enemy Images] ed. byKerestecioğlu, İnci Özkan, and Güven Gürkan Öztan. İstanbul: İletişim.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Polletta, Francesca, Pang Ching Bobby Chen, Beth Gharrity Gardner, and Alice Motes
    2011 “The Sociology of Storytelling,” Annual Review of Sociology37:109–130, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41288601
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Riezler, Kurt
    1944 “The Social Psychology of Fear,” American Journal of Sociology49:489–498. www.jstor.org/stable/2771546
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Stevenson, Patrick
    2010Language and Social Change in Central Europe: Discourses on Policy, Identity and the German Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635986.001.0001
    https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635986.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  21. Tambar, Kabir
    2009 “Secular Populism and the Semiotics of the Crowd in Turkey.” Public Culture, 21(3), 517–537. 10.1215/08992363‑2009‑006
    https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-2009-006 [Google Scholar]
  22. Ünder, Hasan
    2001 “Atatürk İmgesinin Siyasal Yaşamdaki Rolü [The Role of Atatürk Image in Political Life]” InModern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce, Kemalizm [Political Thought in Modern Turkey, Kemalism] ed. byİnsel, Ahmet. İstanbul: İletişim.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Walton, Jeremy
    2010 “Practices of Neo-Ottomanism: Making space and place virtuous in Istanbul.” InOrienting Istanbul: culture capital of Europe?, ed. byGöktürk, Deniz, Levent Soysal, and Ipek Tureli. Routledge.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Warner, Michael
    2002 “Publics and Counterpublics.” Public Culture14, no.1: 49–90. https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessedJuly 14, 2018).
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Weber, Max
    1978Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Vol.1. California: University of California Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Yılmaz, Coşkun
    (ed.) 2010II. Abdülhamid: Modernleşme Sürecinde İstanbul. [II. Abdülhamid: Istanbul in Modernization Process] Istanbul: İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Ay, Hasan
    . “Monument at Bridge Entrance Tribute to July 15 Coup Victims.” Daily Sabah. Daily Sabah, June18 2017https://www.dailysabah.com/istanbul/2017/06/19/monument-at-bridge-entrance-tribute-to-july-15-coup-victims
  28. Erdoğan, R. Tayyip
    . “‘Presidential System Is Not New to Us.’” Presidency of TheRepublic of Turkey: The speech at a mass opening ceremony of new facilities in Eyüp district of IstanbulAccessedFebruary 27, 2019. https://www.tccb.gov.tr/en/news/542/43887/presidential-system-is-not-new-to-us.html
  29. . “‘Cumhuriyetin Sahibi Milletimizin Kendisidir, Sembolü de Cumhurbaşkanlığı Külliyesidir.’ [The Owner of the Republic is the Nation, and its Symbol is Presidential Complex]” AccessedJuly, 2018. www.tccb.gov.tr/haberler/410/35788/cumhuriyetin-sahibi-milletimizin-kendisidir-sembolu-de-cumhurbaskanligi-kulliyesidir.html
  30. . “The speech at a mass opening ceremony in Malatya”, Istanbul, February18 2017 Available at: www.tccb.gov.tr/en/news/542/71075/cumhurbaskanligi-sisteminin-arkasinda-yuzlerce-yillik-birikim-var.html (accessedJuly 22, 2017)
  31. Fatih Municipality
    Fatih Municipality. “Marmaray, the Dream of a Century, Has Come True,” November6 2013www.fatih.bel.tr/en/content/8403/marmaray-the-dream-of-a-century-has-come-true/ (accessedJuly 22, 2017).
  32. “Erdoğan Returns the Caftan of Succession to his Original Place After an Attempt to Smuggle it by Gulen Terrorist Organization” Daily Sabah, April4 2018, https://www.dailysabah.com/arabic/history/2017/04/18/rdogan-returns-the-caftan-of-succession-to-his-original-place-after-an-attempt-to-smuggle-it-by-gulen-terrorist-organization (accessedJuly 6, 2018)
    [Google Scholar]
  33. “Turkish President Erdoğan recites Islamic prayer at the Hagia Sophia,” Hürriyet Daily News, April1 2018www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-president-erdogan-recites-islamic-prayer-at-the-hagia-sophia-129594 (accessedJune 1, 2018)
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/jlp.19076.cak
Loading
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error