Coming to Terms With the Past

Rewriting History Through a Therapeutic Public Discourse in Turkey

Bibliographic Data

ID8966752
AuthorsDuygu Gül Kaya (corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume47
Issue4
Pages681-700
Publication date2015-10-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal Middle East Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-7438 • E-ISSN: 1471-6380
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020743815000938
OpenAlexW2604360635
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited54

This article examines the growing interest in questions of memory, trauma, and justice in Turkey, with a special focus on the notion of “coming to terms with the past.” Through an analysis of key academic and popular texts published between 2002 and 2013, it argues that “coming to terms with the past” is a therapeutic public discourse that rewrites national history through the temporality of trauma. In other words, this discourse reconfigures the sequence of past, present, and future as the beginning, development, and end of a case of collective trauma, applying the psychotherapeutic terminology of victimhood, healing, and forgiveness to social realities. The article offers new perspective on existing debates over “coming to terms with the past” by analyzing the limits of this therapeutic discourse and by exploring the potential and open-endedness of the politics of memory in Turkey

Art · Collective memory · Epistemology · Forgiveness · Linguistics · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Politics · Public discourse · Rewriting · Sociology · Temporality · Terminology · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Law · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Psychology · Social Psychology · Turkey's Politics and Society

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