Cover not available
Article published In:
Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 20:6 (2021) ► pp.873–893

Retrieving the new from the legacy of history

Discourse and symbols of history in Modern Turkey

ORCID logo | Acıbadem University
| Erciyes University
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.
Keywords: Turkey, Erdoğan, AKP, legitimacy, founding father, symbols, historical figures, Ottoman legacy, fathers, storytelling
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
Published online: 20 April 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19076.cak
References (33)
References
Akgündüz, Ahmet, Said Öztürk, and Yaşar Baş. 2006. Ayasofya Mosque: From Church to Museum. Istanbul: The Ottoman Research Foundation.Google Scholar
Cagaptay, Soner. 2017. The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey. Bloomsbury Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 1991. “Morality, Identity, and Historical Explanation: Charles Taylor on the Sources of the Self. Sociological Theory,” 9(2),232. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cassirer, Ernst. 1955. The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms. Vol. 1461. New Haven, USA: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Dressler, Markus, and Arvind Mandair, eds. 2011. Secularism and Religion-making. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holly, A. Shissler. 2003. Between Two Empires: Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey. London: IB Tauris Co. Ltd, 6531.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kahraman, Kemal. 2002. “Kuntay, Mithat Cemal,” TDV İslam Ansiklopedisi.Google Scholar
Kane, Anne. 2017. Constructing Irish National Identity: Discourse and Ritual During the Land War, 1879–1882. Berlin, Germany: Springer.Google Scholar
Karpat, Karpat. H. 2001. The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Le Goff, Jacques. 1992. History and Memory. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Mango, Andrew. Ataturk. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Mümeyyiz, October 15, 1869 (1):3Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tambar, Kabir. 2009. “Secular Populism and the Semiotics of the Crowd in Turkey.” Public Culture, 21(3), 517–537. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
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.Google Scholar
Yılmaz, Coşkun. (ed.). 2010. II. Abdülhamid: Modernleşme Sürecinde İstanbul. [II. Abdülhamid: Istanbul in Modernization Process] Istanbul: İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti.Google Scholar
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]
. “‘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]
. “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 (1)

Cited by one other publication

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. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. 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.