| My proposed research focuses on the construction of collective memory in Turkey and analyzes this particular construction by discovering its relationship with space and spatial practices. In order to understand how collective memory is formed, shaped and manipulated in/through and how it become an ideological tool in creating the identity of a nation; the Republican interventions that considered as the practices of organized forgetting and through which the legacy of the Ottoman Empire had at-tempted to erase will be elaborated. Collective memory will be employed here as a particular construction that sustains the feeling of sameness over time and space within the individuals and will be analyzed as this particular construction changes according to the present needs of any group. In this vein, this research will demar-cate collective memory in terms of nation and relate the notion of collective memory with the formation of national identity. The spatial practices are regarded as a part of the dynamics of collective memory through which the representation of a nation is reified and conveyed by the images of national narrative. In this research, Ankara and Istanbul are taken as the places in which the rep-resentational forms of the nation are localized, constructed and re-constructed ac-cording to the changes in historical, political, cultural and social frameworks of Tur-key during the formation of Turkish nation state. Therefore, this research aims to handle a comparative analysis between the two cities of Turkey, one is the ex capital and the other is the new one, by examining the years between 1923 and 1950 (the period between the establishment of Turkish Republic and transition to the multi party regime) and to clarify the formation of national collective memory by focusing on the use of space. |
