Faces of Republican Turkey: Beyond the Modernization Hypothesis
Building the Memory of the Early Republican Period: La Turquie Kemaliste
Emine Zeynep SudaThere has been a considerable amount of studies on the quality and construction of social memory lately. The
relationship between social memory and memory spaces and the construction of the nation and national identity is
searched with respect to various countries, historical contexts and spaces. Social memory is accepted as a social
production and construction but we must take into account the differences in historical contexts, specific conditions
and places. In the Turkish case, most of the latest research on this area are concentrated on the early Republican
period. In the 1920s and 30s, while trying to heal the wounds of the Balkan Wars, the Great War and the War of
Independence the political cadres of the Republican period tried to improve the economic, political and social needs
of the society, while working on the construction of the Turkish nation in domestic and foreign grounds. They tried
to visualize and propagate the efforts of the new Republic and the developments of the period. Publications of those
times were interesting in this sense. They published books and periodicals in foreign languages, joined in international
fairs and exhibitions, especially in western countries. In this paper I would like to depict those efforts in a periodical
published over 49 issues between 1933 and 1949, La Turquie Kemaliste that includes a catalogue of visual materials
and illustrations representing modern Turkey.