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“Discovering Our Past”: Are “We” Breaking Taboos? Reconstructing Atatürkism and the Past in Contemporary Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Extract

In 1993, a documentary film titled Sarı Zeybek, which narrates the last days of Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, appeared on a private TV channel in Turkey. Having roused considerable interest, the film reappeared on screens a few more times and later was made into a video. Can Dündar, the producer of the film, writes:

When I was a child, I could not understand why the statues of Atatürk were put so high, that as I tried to stare at them, my neck would start to hurt. I could not know why he would always appear alone in his pictures …. Atatürk was a statue far away and a lonely picture …. With this film, in which we narrate his last 300 days, this statue came down to earth. We could touch him …. We loved not the tough hero of poems, but this emotional man whose eyes would fill with tears as he watched the celebrations of the Republic from his window. Unfortunately, they have not introduced us to this man in schools. Sarı Zeybek is a brave step for this late introduction [on the back cover of the tape].

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2001

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