Alper Çakmak
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 95] 2021
► pp. 93–146
Contemporary Turkey has been subjected to reforms, modern agendas, and novelties whose legitimacy derives from the legacy of history. The constituents of this legacy are images, historical figures, representations of historical events, and deep-rooted symbolism. These constituents are employed by President Erdoğan, the leader of the AKP, as vehicles through which he positions himself as the Ottoman descendent, the most appropriate representative of Islamic creed and Anatolian culture. He adopts these constituents in marking the boundary between the self and others through us–them distinction. The self, as the appropriate teller and appropriate doer, incrementally gains an upper hand in legitimacy struggles by recounting anecdotes, stories, and tales from history, thereby emerging as the new founding father of contemporary Turkey in the eyes of voters and introducing new policies that originate from the majestic legacy of the past. The cumulative transformation of the political culture in Turkey has been exposed to the introduction of novelties through an amalgam of symbols, representations, imagery, and figures retrieved from the aforementioned legacy. The role of discursive and non-discursive measures in projecting the self as the suitable narrator in the eyes of masses and the institution of contemporary policies can be scrutinized on the basis of the reinterpretation/appropriation of images, figures, representations, and potential symbolisms retrieved from the past. Discursive and non-discursive tools in the public sphere are meant to uncover that the symbols and symbolisms nourished by different interpretations of memory activate the image of the self and the historical legitimacy stemming from historical symbols and imageries that advance the establishment and actualization of the new.