Our knowledge of the 1953 coup has been distorted in part because US documents remained classified until recently – the British ones remain so; and in part because revisionist historians have argued endlessly that external powers played merely secondary roles while the primary actors were internal ones, namely the conservative clergy. The new documents show that without the CIA there would have been no royal participation, no parliamentary obstructionism, no tank officer coordination, and no clerical involvement. The coup, by undermining the legitimacy of the monarchy, helped pave the way to the 1979 revolution – precisely the reason the shah had been reluctant to lend his name.

The documents reveal the deep involvement of the USA and the United Kingdom in internal Iranian politics before the 1953 coup – especially in attempts to water down nationalization, to replace Mossadeq with a more compliant prime minister, resulting in the July 1952 uprising, and to prevent the shah from leaving Iran in early 1953. The shah later thanked the USA for having saved the monarchy in February 1953.

The introduction to A Battlefield of Memory provides the reader with an understanding of the societal importance of the foundational pasts under review while highlighting existing trends of denial. Readers are also familiarized with polls conducted among Palestinians and Israeli-Jews on attitudes toward the other’s foundational trauma and failed reconciliatory attempts, which shed light on the materialization of mnemonic delegitimization efforts. Interviews conducted with the Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian individuals responsible for these initiatives demonstrate that they have, ironically, been accused of the same perfidious conduct, namely “selling out to the enemy.” The introduction further provides a synopsis of scholarly approaches to collective memory theory and the key research methodologies that have been applied in the collection of primary source material. It is in this particular context that the reader is informed of important caveats that should be taken into account during the reading of this work. One such provision concerns this work’s simultaneous deliberation of the Holocaust and the Nakba, which does not mean equating them or promulgating a causal linkage. Such a conflation would not only be historically – and ethically – erroneous, but equally fail to recognize the divergence in historical culpability. Nevertheless, as this work illustrates, a more relational linkage does exist: as dominant national metanarratives, the Holocaust and the Nakba have bolstered exclusive identities within the two groups, both centering on unique claims of ongoing victimhood and loss and a consequential devaluation – if not denial – of the other’s catastrophe

This chapter summarises and discusses the findings of the book. It elaborates on how the hegemony of the Young Turks (and later Kemalist Republicans) and the Erdoğanist counter-hegemony in Turkey use very similar methods to build their nation, the same tools for social engineering, and the same procedures for the production of citizenship to establish and consolidate their respective hegemonies. The two opposing but influential political ideologies of modern Turkey have sometimes even used the same discourse, albeit for different purposes. There is also a significant degree of overlap between their undesired citizen categories. These are two different regimes relying on two different ideologies, but both of them target, otherise, and even demonise (mostly) the same groups, including Kurdish nationalists, Alevis, non-Muslims, leftists, liberals and practising Muslims who do not completely support the regimes. In addition to desired and undesired citizen typologies, Kemalism and Erdoğanism also have a liminal citizenship category, identity and typology: tolerated citizens (Homo Diyanetus). The chapter also summarises the innovations and contributions of the book, highlights its limitations and discusses potential future studied on the topic. Lastly, the chapter looks at the future of Erdoğan's nation.

Section II of this volume centers on the collective mnemonic invocation of the two watersheds under review. The focus in this part lies on national memorial days – Yawm al-Nakbah (Arabic: Nakba day) and Yom ha-Shoah (Hebrew: Holocaust day) – and on places of commemoration. Through differentiating between non-physical and physical mnemonic acts, the two chapters that make up this part testify to the different mnemonics that have arisen as a result of the diverging political reality that exists in both societies under review. Within the 1948 borders, access to former Palestinian villages has meant that Nakba commemorations encompass physical mnemonics that center on former Palestinians localities, whereas restrictions on Palestinian movement into Israel have meant that non-site-specific commemorative acts dominate in the West Bank. The existing political circumstances have created a further disparity in the official nature of the Israeli and Palestinian institutes and organizations involved in commemoration. In the Israeli context, the three main Holocaust memorial institutes under examination in Israel, namely Yad Vashem, Lohamei Hagetaot, and Yad Mordechai, conform with the official state narrative. Conversely, the absence of Palestinian governance in Palestinian society inside the 1948 borders and post-Oslo hostility toward the PA has meant that an overt state-sanctioned narrative has largely remained absent in Nakba commemorations, leading civil society organizations on both sides of the Green Line to adopt a dominant role in mnemonics.

This chapter analyses the Kemalism’s tolerated citizen creation project via the state’s powerful Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) that controls all mosques and employs all imams and preachers in Turkey. Kemalism wanted to keep Islam under its strict control to prevent its potential use for opposition. Thus, it made it illegal to have private mosques or to function as a non-state employer of imams. However, the Kemalist state also wanted to use Islam as a helping hand to build the nation based on the majority’s sectarian as well as ethnic identity. Thus, it worked to create a secularist and Turkish nationalism-friendly Islam –what I call ‘Diyanet Islam’. Before AKP came to power there were about 75,000 mosques in Turkey. The Diyanet used these mosques as adult education and indoctrination centres by politically instrumentalising weekly Friday sermons that are attended by about 60 per cent of the nation’s adult males. After elaborating on and defining Diyanet Islam, the chapter proceeds to discuss the Kemalist construction of a tolerated citizen category that I call ‘Homo Diyanetus’. Homo Diyanetus refers to a practising Sunni Muslim citizen of Turkey who follows the state manufactured Diyanet Islam, reveres the state and Atatürk, is Turkish nationalist, militarist and is definitely not a member or participant of any other religious group, brotherhood or movement.