Turkish Literature and Cultural Memory

The emergence of Turkey as a nation-state at the beginning of the twentieth century was accompanied by a radical alienation from the multinational Ottoman Empire and its multicultural heritage. This break resulted in a gap in the collective memory of Turkey reflected as well in Turkish literature, which for decades was largely marked by the absence of any mention of the country's multicultural past. It was only in the years following the devastating coup d'état of 1980, as the political and cultural situation gradually became more liberal, that the tendency towards re-discovery of "multiculturalism" as a literary theme, based on the Ottoman and Turkish past, emerged. This resulted in the development of a broader discourse that continues still today. The contributions in this book are the outcome of an international workshop held as part of the University of Gießen's Collaborative Research Center "Memory Cultures" (SFB 434). They cover significant theoretical as well as sociopolitical aspects of cultural memory within the Turkish context and include comparative and transnational analyses of the theme of "multiculturalism" in Turkey's recent cultural production in literature and film.