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Reconstructing the past in a post-Ottoman village: Turkishness in a transnational context

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Anna Zadrożna
Anna Zadrożna*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Yeditepe University, Istanbul, Turkey
*
*Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

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This study analyzes transformations of historiography and identity discourses by focusing on the Memory House of Ali Rıza Efendi (the father of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) as a “site of historical consciousness” which was reconstructed in the western part of the Republic of Macedonia. The House, referred to by the villagers as the “Memory House of Atatürk,” was opened in 2014 in a Muslim village, Kocacık, with the support of the Turkish state. Through material and textual representations of Atatürk's life, the House speaks to the Turkishness and Turkish presence in the Balkans. The Turkishness, however, is imagined through the neo-Ottoman and Islamic prisms. The House thus becomes the locus of alternative interpretations of the past, and, consequently, narratives of Muslims’ identity and origin in the region. Moreover, as it is reconstructed at the nexus of the local and the transnational, the House is also called a symbol of the “politics of brotherhood” between Macedonia and Turkey. In this way, the institution embodies the reconstruction of the past not only at the local and national levels, but also at the international level.

Keywords

historical consciousnessidentityTurkishnessBalkan Muslimsmuseums
Type
Special Section: Localizing Islam: National paradigms, new actors, and contingent choices
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , July 2017 , pp. 524 - 539
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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