Retrieving the new from the legacy of history
Discourse and symbols of history in Modern Turkey
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.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Theoretical source of publicness
- 3.Instituting the self
- 4.The appropriate narrator
- 5.Appropriate doer
- 6.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
References (33)
References
Akgündüz, Ahmet, Said Öztürk, and Yaşar Baş. 2006. Ayasofya
Mosque: From Church to Museum. Istanbul: The Ottoman Research Foundation.
Cagaptay, Soner. 2017. The
New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey. Bloomsbury Publishing. 

Calhoun, Craig. 1991. “Morality,
Identity, and Historical Explanation: Charles Taylor on the Sources of the Self. Sociological
Theory,” 9(2),232. 

Cassirer, Ernst. 1955. The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. 1461. New Haven, USA: Yale University Press.
Dressler, Markus, and Arvind Mandair, eds. 2011. Secularism
and Religion-making. Oxford University Press.
Hałas, Elżbieta. 2010. “Symbolic
Construction of ‘Solidarity’: The Conflict of Interpretations and the Politics of
Memory,” Polish Sociological
Review 1701:219–232. JSTOR, [URL]
Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü. 2006. Osmanlı’dan
Cumhuriyet’e zihniyet, siyaset ve tarih. [Mentality, Politics and History: From
Ottoman Empire to
Republic] Vol. 2731. İstanbul:Bağlam Yayıncılık.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The
Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Holly, A. Shissler. 2003. Between Two Empires: Ahmet
Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey. London: IB Tauris Co. Ltd, 6531.
Jansen, Robert. S. 2007. “Resurrection and Appropriation:
Reputational Trajectories, Memory Work, and the Political Use of Historical Figures,” American
Journal of
Sociology 1121:953–1007. 

Kahraman, Kemal. 2002. “Kuntay,
Mithat Cemal,” TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi.
Kane, Anne. 2017. Constructing
Irish National Identity: Discourse and Ritual During the Land War, 1879–1882. Berlin, Germany: Springer.
Karpat, Karpat. H. 2001. The Politicization of Islam:
Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman
State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Le Goff, Jacques. 1992. History
and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mango, Andrew. Ataturk. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000.
Mümeyyiz, October 15, 1869 (1):3
Özekmekçi, M. İnanç. 2012. “Türk Sağında
Ayasofya İmgesi [The Image of Hagia Sophia in Turkish Right Wing
Parties]”, In Türk Sağı: Mitler, Fetişler, Düşman
İmgeleri, [Turkish Right Wing Parties: Myths, Fetishes, Enemy
Images] ed. by Kerestecioğlu, İnci Özkan, and Güven Gürkan Öztan. İstanbul: İletişim.
Polletta, Francesca, Pang Ching Bobby Chen, Beth Gharrity Gardner, and Alice Motes. 2011. “The
Sociology of Storytelling,” Annual Review of
Sociology 371:109–130, JSTOR, [URL]
Riezler, Kurt. 1944. “The
Social Psychology of Fear,” American Journal of
Sociology 491:489–498. [URL]
Stevenson, Patrick. 2010. Language
and Social Change in Central Europe: Discourses on Policy, Identity and the German
Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 

Tambar, Kabir. 2009. “Secular
Populism and the Semiotics of the Crowd in Turkey.” Public
Culture, 21(3), 517–537. 

Ünder, Hasan. 2001. “Atatürk İmgesinin Siyasal Yaşamdaki Rolü [The Role of Atatürk
Image in Political Life]” In Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi
Düşünce, Kemalizm [Political Thought in Modern Turkey,
Kemalism] ed. by İnsel, Ahmet. İstanbul: İletişim.
Walton, Jeremy. 2010. “Practices
of Neo-Ottomanism: Making space and place virtuous in
Istanbul.” In Orienting Istanbul: culture capital of
Europe?, ed. by Göktürk, Deniz, Levent Soysal, and Ipek Tureli. Routledge.
Warner, Michael. 2002. “Publics
and Counterpublics.” Public
Culture 14, no. 1: 49–90. [URL] (accessed July 14, 2018).
Weber, Max. 1978. Economy
and Society: An Outline of Interpretive
Sociology. Vol. 11. California: University of California Press.
Yılmaz, Coşkun. (ed.). 2010. II. Abdülhamid: Modernleşme Sürecinde İstanbul. [II. Abdülhamid:
Istanbul in Modernization
Process] Istanbul: İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti.
Internet Publications
Ay, Hasan. “Monument
at Bridge Entrance Tribute to July 15 Coup Victims.” Daily Sabah. Daily
Sabah, June 18, 2017. [URL]
Erdoğan, R. Tayyip. “‘Presidential System Is Not New to
Us.’” Presidency of The Republic of Turkey: The speech at a mass opening ceremony of new facilities in Eyüp district of Istanbul Accessed February
27, 2019. [URL]
Erdoğan, R. Tayyip. “‘Cumhuriyetin Sahibi Milletimizin
Kendisidir, Sembolü de Cumhurbaşkanlığı Külliyesidir.’ [The Owner of the
Republic is the Nation, and its Symbol is Presidential
Complex]” Accessed July,
2018. [URL]
Erdoğan, R. Tayyip. “The speech at a mass opening ceremony in
Malatya”, Istanbul, February 18, 2017. Available
at: [URL] (accessed July 22, 2017)
Fatih Municipality. “Marmaray, the Dream of a
Century, Has Come
True,” November 6, 2013. [URL] (accessed July 22, 2017).
“Erdoğan Returns the Caftan of Succession to his Original Place After
an Attempt to Smuggle it by Gulen Terrorist Organization” Daily
Sabah, April 4, 2018, [URL] (accessed July 6, 2018)
“Turkish President Erdoğan recites Islamic prayer at the Hagia
Sophia,” Hürriyet Daily
News, April 1, 2018. [URL] (accessed June 1, 2018)
Cited by (2)
Cited by two other publications
Hastie, Brianne, Martha Augoustinos & Kellie Elovalis
2023.
‘A day that unites the nation': contesting historical narratives in national day discussions.
Critical Discourse Studies 20:5
► pp. 491 ff.

[no author supplied]
2024.
"Ognuno porta dentro di sé un mondo intero" [
Biblioteca di Studi di Filologia Moderna, 75],

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 january 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.