Anesthetic Memory Loss: Military Coup as a Visual Commodity

The 1980 military coup in Turkey was the manifestation of physical coercion of the military-state, repressing and subjugating the members of society through violence, arrests, tortures and death penalties. The effects of this traumatic event led to a silenced society and forms of collective avoidance of expressing the memories of the coup, creating secrecy for the post-1980 period. In the year 2004, however, a series of coup films emerged, for the first time, giving a visual expression to this key event. My thesis explores the mechanisms which determined the after-coup period, and examines its current mnemonic representation within the films. The study, based on content analysis of five films Vizontele Tuuba (2004), Babam ve Oglum (My Father and Son, 2006), Beynelmilel (International, 2006), Eve Donus (Return to Home, 2007) and Zincirbozan (2007), inquires into the representations of mechanisms of silence/secrecy, repression and ideology which have also negatively affected the expression and formation of collective memory. While the films do not merge into a uniform collective memory scheme, this study also opens up further questions of commerciality of the coup films.

Autorentext

Melida Tuzunoglu was born in 25 April 1984, Istanbul. She studied Sociology and Film Studies at Bogaziçi University, Istanbul. In 2007, she moved to Budapest for studying Sociology & Social Anthropology (MA) at Central European University. In 2008, she did her second MA in European Studies at Maastricht University. She lives in the Netherlands.