Defeated and alone: The emotional state of Turks
OLGA SELIN HÜNLER
Studying emotions in psychology as we define them today is relatively new. Various emotion theories have explained the emergence of emotions by addressing physiological, evolutionary, cognitive, and social factors and have classified emotions into categories such as basic emotions, pro-social emotions, and group-based emotions. This paper aims to offer a perspective on understanding the emotional state of Turkish society, which is undergoing ongoing and severe social transformations and crises. The main framework of this article is formed by how negative emotions such as resentment, anger, anxiety, disgust, which are increasing in society along with political, social, and economic adversities, and decreasing positive emotions such as joy, curiosity, happiness, transform social relations.
Keywords: Emotions, emotion theories, group-based emotions, crises.
Harassment, fear, hope, despair: Urban secularism as a self-defeating political discourse
ERDEM DAMAR
This article aims to explain the role of civilizationist ideology and feelings of harassment, fear, hope and discouragement on the formation, transformation, and dissolution of urban secularism discourse, which was an influential movement in Turkey’s post-1990 political history. The article seeks to explain why an effective struggle for secularism cannot be mobilized in contemporary Turkey. The argument is that the secular mobilization from the 1990s to early 2010s was based on struggling against the image of an Islamic other, which was experienced as a threat under the impact of the feelings of harassment and fear empowered by a civilizationist ideology. The exclusionary and authoritarian character of this urban secularism has lost its legitimacy among a wide range of excluded social segments, which had facilitated the conditions for the AKP to mobilize these excluded segments. The 2013 Gezi Park protests gained visibility to the hope for the making of a plural secular ethos in the country. The repression of this pluralist secular imaginary by the AKP also facilitated conditions for the latter to enhance its hegemonic capacity based on Islamic-oriented oppressive politics. This development subsequently caused the transformation of this hope into despair, which also marked the dissolution of the struggle for secularism. Thus, it becomes clear that one of the conditions for not being able to struggle for secularism today is the self-defeating characteristic of urban secularism discourse due to its exclusionary identity.
Keywords: Urban secularism, Islamic other, civilizationism, harassment, fear, hope, despair.
The spiral of nostalgia: Hometown or future or your past, which is more distant?
KADİR DEDE - SEMA AYDENİZ
This paper focuses on nostalgia as a determinant of the emotional structure of contemporary Turkey. Nostalgia can be grasped simply as a basic individual sentiment as missing the past. Nonetheless, due to its collective and public influences, it triggers comprehensive debates related to politics, sociology, and history. Throughout the 20th century, nostalgia carried a key role in a comparative analysis of past and present. However, the internet and new media technologies of the 21st century have diversified and enriched the ways of accessibility to the past and positioned nostalgia as a spiral that is almost inescapable and that shapes all aspects of life in the light of the past rather than a comparison with present and future. Yearning for yesterday has become a cornerstone of today’s politics which designs the ultimate political goals by replacing future tense with the past. Turkey is not only an instance of this experience but also an interesting case study in which the new millennium almost overlaps with a transition to a new era under AKP rule. Such that, nostalgic perspective on the 1990s –with the specific title of “old Turkey”– provides a basis for criticism and opposition of contemporary politics as well as indicates the idealized social and political order. Furthermore, the nostalgic mood diversifies the discourses against the AKP government with a bottom-up style through an emphasis on yesterday’s everyday life via social media users. However, in spite of the positive functions of nostalgia for individuals and groups, its popularity and power limit future-oriented policy-making and discourses which prevent a radical expectation and hope for the opposition in Turkey.
Keywords: Nostalgia, Turkey, AKP, the 1990s, the opposition, social media, everyday life, popular culture.
The power of feeling, the violence of loss: An atlas of emotions of relatives of the enforced disappeared
ÖZGÜR SEVGİ GÖRAL
In this article, I aim to create an atlas of emotions based on the experiences of the relatives of the disappeared, whose relatives were forcibly disappeared in the context of the Kurdish conflict, focusing on their emotions and affect. I argue that the three most basic emotions of this atlas are fear, anger and resentment. I believe that working on this field of emotions and affect will not only provide a more sophisticated framework to the literature on the Kurdish issue, but will also make a significant contribution to the study of state violence in general. This field has important things to say about the social consequences produced by the difficult experiences of violence, political mobilization, commitment, mobilization and forms of organization. Reflecting on both the political results produced by this field and the overflow or the eccess from the political field will enable us to obtain important data on the Kurdish issue, the struggle for equal rights, possible mechanisms of reparation and coexistence.
Keywords: Dealing with the past, emotions and affect, enforced disappearances, fear, Kurdish conflict, rage, resentment, state violence.
“Why isn’t the world collapsing?”: Emotional networks in Turkish novel and story of the last decade
ESRA DİCLE
In the nineteenth century, the concept of emotion, which became widespread in usage and whose meaning and definition have constantly changed throughout history, has been the subject of studies especially in the last twenty years in the fields of sociology, anthropology, history, economics, philosophy, and gender studies, revealing the historical, cultural, and collective aspects and sources of emotions rather than just individual ones. Studies on emotions are evolving as a field that reflects on questions such as what we do with emotions, what emotions do to us, and which emotions underlie the production, circulation, and dissemination of historical writing, political discourses, the experience of modernity, capitalism, collective identities, individual relationships, and self-construction, drawing on the findings of various disciplines. Today, in order to interpret forms of domination by powers, social movements, and collective experiences, it is necessary to consider the political nature of emotions, the social practices of their structuring, individual behaviors inherent in these structures, and thus the production and circulation relationships of emotions inherent in the capitalist system. In this article, based on personal readings and research shaped by novels and stories written in Turkish between 2013-2023, I aim to outline the emotional patterns of texts within an inevitably limited and incomplete selection. However, I will also attempt to understand how the events of the past decade in Turkey —such as the Gezi resistance, clashes in Sur, the Suruç massacre, general and local elections, the July 15 coup attempt, environmental destruction, flood and fire disasters, the climate crisis, thousands of people losing their jobs through decrees with KHK, judicial coups, etc.— have been followed in texts, and whether they directly or indirectly affect the content and aesthetics of the texts. In the flow of the article, I will first provide a brief introduction to clarify some of the sources and concepts I will use regarding studies on emotions. Then, I will outline the class, ethnic, and political dynamics, as well as the relationships with language and the body, of dominant emotions such as fear, resistance, hope, and despair seen in the texts. Finally, I will attempt to understand the function-effect of the emotional map of the texts in understanding-reflecting-changing the current political atmosphere.
Keywords: Affect theory, story, novel, witnessing, embarassment.
Sombre and barren: Allegorical nation in Turkish political cinema
ÖZGÜR YAREN
This article compares two recent Turkish films, Kurak Günler (Burning Days, 2022) and Karanlık Gece (Black Night, 2023), exhibiting the national allegory characteristic of political cinema. The analysis focuses on the allegorical mechanisms and common narrative tropes employed in these texts, and interrogates the understanding of Turkey that emerges from them.
Both films select the small town as an allegorical space, drawing on the conventions of Turkish literature and political cinema to construct a miniaturized and simplified model of the nation, in which fundamental tensions, antagonisms, and problems are foregrounded. The films center on the ideological struggle over history and memory, and make references to ecological crimes, corruption, sexism, and other contemporary social issues. As products of a period marked by crisis and melancholy, the films develop a unique aesthetic of defeat.
Keywords: Burning Days, Black Night, political cinema, national allegory, memory.
