Abstract
With the coming to power of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by its leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkish Muslim nationalism, a new national ideology promoted by the AKP, laid the foundations for a new Turkey and new Turks. Yeni Türkiye Yolunda (Towards a new Turkey) is the slogan used by the Erdoğan’s party to support a more nationalist Turkey intertwined with its Ottoman and Islamic heritage. In this paper, I put forward the claim that a number of State-sponsored institutions, including new national museums, play a relevant role in shaping this new Turkey. The aim is to investigate how museums operate as instruments of national identity building by exhibiting a fictitious national past. The case study of the Kabatepe Simulation Centre and Museum will serve this purpose. By interviewing politicians, bureaucrats, and historians, I have researched the links between a ruling class that supports Turkish Muslim nationalism, and new public museums, which exhibits it.
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Notes
Copyright photograph: Mike Osborne/AAP. Freely accessible online at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/apr/20/ataturks-johnnies-and-mehmets-words-about-the-anzacs-are-shrouded-in-doubt
Internet source: http://www.Çanakkaleninrehberi.com/?Syf=18&Hbr=356794. Access date 10 October 2017
For the sake of clarity though, Gallipoli is not only national history and political events. This area is a wonderful natural reserve, one of the most European part of the country, and accounts for about 40% of Turkey’s wine production. Source: http://www.winesofa.eu/articles/turkish-wine-renaissance-in-thrace-and-the-gallipoli-peninsula (accessed on 04 May 2018)
The full video of Sehit Onbasi can be seen on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9z-Sq1UyJw (Access date 15 August 2018)
The following link shows one of the many theatrical reproduction of Onbasi’s story. Notably, the British and the Turkish troops fight while the public, which is emotionally involved in the battle, cries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QHk3PFPMRU (Access date 15 August 2018)
Booklet of the Ministry of Forestry and Water, Gallipoli Peninsula National Park. Available at: http://www.milliparklar.gov.tr/kitap/55/55.pdf. Access date 21 January 2017
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Posocco, L. The Politics of Nationalism in Recently Built Turkish Museums: the Case of the Kabatepe Simulation Centre and Museum. Int J Polit Cult Soc 33, 67–87 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9309-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9309-7