Museums, emotion, and memory culture : the politics of the past in Turkey

231 Pages·2019·51.372 MB·English

by  Gönül Bozoglu

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Museums, Emotion, and

Memory Culture
Museums, Emotion, and Memory Culture examines the politics of emotion in
history museums, combining approaches and concerns from museum, heri-
tage and memory studies, anthropology and studies of emotion. Exploring
the meanings and politics of memory contests in Turkey, a site for complex
negotiations of identity, the book asks what it means for museums to charge
the past with political agendas through spectacular, emotive representations.
Providing an in-d epth examination of emotional practice in two Turkish
museums that present contrasting representations of the national past, the
book analyses relationships between memory, governmentality, identity, and
emotion. The museums discussed celebrate Ottoman and Early Republican
pasts, linking to geo- and party politics, people’s senses of who they are,
popular memory culture, and competing national stories and identities vis-
à- vis Europe and the wider world. Both museums use dramatic, emotive
panoramas as key displays and the research at the heart of this book explores
this seemingly anachronistic choice, and how it links with memory cultures
to prompt visitors to engage imaginatively, socially, politically, and morally
with a particular version of the past.
Although the book focuses on museums in Turkey, it uses this as a plat-
form to address broader questions about memory culture, emotion, and
identity. As such, Museums and Memory Culture should be of great interest
to academics and students around the world who are engaged in the study
of museums, heritage, culture, history, politics, anthropology, sociology, and
the psychology of emotion.
Gönül Bozoğlu is currently a Leverhulme Research Fellow at Newcastle
University, UK, where she undertakes research across heritage, memory, and
museum studies.
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Routledge Research in Museum Studies

Titles include:
An Ethnography of New Zealand’s National Museum
Grappling with Biculturalism at Te Papa
Tanja Schubert- McArthur
Museums and Photography
Displaying Death
Elena Stylianou, Theopisti Stylianou- Lambert
Museums and the Ancient Middle East
Edited by Geoff Emberling and Lucas P. Petit
Collecting Computer- based Technology
Curational Expertise at the Smithsonian Museums
Petrina Foti
Museums as Cultures of Copies
Edited by Brenna Brita
Museums, Emotion, and Memory Culture
The Politics of the Past in Turkey
Gönül Bozoğlu
www.routledge.com/ Routledge- Research- in- Museum- Studies/ book- series/
RRIMS
ii i
Museums, Emotion, and

Memory Culture
The Politics of the Past in Turkey
Gönül Bozoğlu
iv
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Gönül Bozoğlu
The right of Gönül Bozoğlu to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by
her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978- 0-3 67- 14153- 0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0-4 29- 03060- 4 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Newgen Publishing UK
v
Contents

List of figures vi

Acknowledgements viii

1 Introduction 1

2 The museums and their histories: the politics of
Ottoman and republican pasts 17

3 Memory, emotion, politics: understanding visitor
encounters with history in the museums 42

4 Politics of display at the Panorama 1453 Museum 66

5 Visitor experience at the Panorama 1453 Museum 96

6 Politics of display at the Atatürk and War of
Independence Museum 119

7 Visitor experience at the Atatürk and War of
Independence Museum 155

8 Time machines and the politics of affective practice 175

Appendix: Visitors surveyed at the Panorama 1453
Museum using a questionnaire 200

References 203

Index 215
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Figures

1.1 A group of visitors viewing the panoramic image of
Greek fire flying towards the Ottoman soldiers,
Panorama 1453 Museum, Istanbul 2
1.2 A detail from the Çanakkale (Gallipoli campaign)
panorama, Atatürk and War of Independence Museum
in Ankara: Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk) the
military commander surveys the battle from a trench.
In the front are 3D elements representing his belongings 3
2.1 Panorama painting from 1912, with replica dead horses in
the foreground, Waterloo Mémorial 1815, Belgium 21
2.2 Anıtkabir in winter, Ankara 27
2.3 An arched vault display in the third section of Atatürk
and War of Independence Museum 30
2.4 The Topkapı ramparts near Panorama 1453 Museum 37
2.5 Panorama 1453 Museum, exterior 38
3.1 Atatürk’s famous Kocatepe pose – deep in strategic thought
on the battlefield 48
3.2 Kocatepe in public space: the Izmir Municipality building 49
4.1 Mosaic of Mehmet II during the Conquest in Ulubatlı
metro station, Istanbul 67
4.2 One of many P1453 exhibits made up of facsimiles of
historic documents, photographs and interpretive texts 73
4.3 Ottoman soldiers wearing the controversial battlewear,
made from the pelts of Anatolian snow leopards; in
front are replica cannons 76
4.4 Predetermined visitor route at P1453 in the rooms with
text panels 78
4.5 The viewing platform showing the glass barrier; also, visitors
on organized tours from Muslim countries outside of Turkey
photograph key scenes of the panorama 81
4.6 Sultan Mehmet II on his white stallion with his retinue 84
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List of figures vii
4.7 The breaching of one of the bastions: Ulubatlı Hasan
(Hasan of Ulubat) is first to hoist the Ottoman flag
on the wall, notwithstanding his arrow wounds 85
6.1 Visitors are told by the guard that they are in the ‘closest’
place to Atatürk in the world. The visitors try to watch the
video feed of Atatürk’s tomb 129
6.2 Section 4 of Atatürk and War of Independence
Museum: Atatürk in his study 131
6.3 Historic photograph of Atatürk at Çanakkale 134
6.4 The Kocatepe pose in the Great Attack panorama in the
Atatürk and War of Independence Museum 135
6.5 A detail from the Çanakkale panorama: Corporal Seyit.
This photograph also shows the low ceiling of the panorama 137
6.6 The famous photograph of Corporal Seyit, in which he
appears to replicate his feat of strength 138
6.7 Geographical and chronological key to the Çanakkale
panorama, reproduced courtesy of the Atatürk and
War of Independence Museum, Ankara 141
6.8 Map of Çanakkale peninsula showing the location and dates
of the episodes pictured in the panorama, and their pictorial
position therein 142
6.9 A detail from the Çanakkale panorama: hand- to- hand
fighting. A Turkish soldier, or ‘Mehmetçik’ aids a wounded
Anzac soldier replicating an iconic image 144
7.1 Visitors in front of the Çanakkale panorama, looking at the
image of Mustafa Kemal (later known as Atatürk) 163
8.1 A mannequin of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl,
Kon- Tiki Museum, Oslo, Norway 196
8.2 The Danish flag descends from the sky in the Danes’ hour of
need, during the Battle of Lyndanisse in the Livonian Crusade
in 1219, Moesgaard Museum, Aarhus, Denmark 197
8.3 ‘Morning at Napoléon’s headquarters’, 1815 Memorial,
Waterloo, Belgium 198
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Acknowledgements

This book began life as a PhD thesis, which was the first to be completed
at the Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage
(CARMAH) at Humboldt University in Berlin. I am deeply grateful to
my principal supervisor, Sharon Macdonald, for her mentorship, support,
encouragement, and advice over many years and two different institutions,
and for helping me to combine a mixed- up background in archaeology,
art history and museology with anthropological thinking and approaches.
I thank my secondary supervisor, Wendy Shaw of Freie Universität Berlin,
for her advice, feedback, and interest in my work. At Humboldt, Christoph
Bareither asked me challenging questions about emotion in museums
and generously opened up new ways of thinking, and many of my con-
temporaries at CARMAH – notably Siriporn Srisinurai, Katarzyna Puzoh,
Christine Gerbich, and Margereta von Oswald – helped with friendship,
moral support, or kindnesses. Geoffrey Cubitt and Laurie Hanquinet were
also important influences and their advice and support shaped my thinking
in the early stages of research. I am indebted to Karen Ross – another key
mentor – and a range of other friends and colleagues who helped me along
the way, especially Çağdaş Adıyeke, Bernt Brendemoen, Brita Brenna, Şenay
Çimen, Eleanor Curry, Burçin Demirbilek, Susannah Eckersley, Hikmet
Vedat Karaduman, Alejandra Jaramillo-V ázquez, Dawei Lu, Dan Merriman,
Claire Marsland, Rhiannon Mason, Andrew Newman, Erling Sverdrup
Sandmo, Serdar Uğurlu, Mustafa Ünal, and Einar Wigen.
I owe a debt of thanks to my research participants, including many people
who freely gave up their time to help me, as well as Istanbul Kültür A.Ș., and
the staff of Anıtkabir Komutanlığı, the Atatürk and War of Independence
Museum and the Panorama 1453 Museum, including the warding staff
who befriended me during my research. I am grateful to Heidi Lowther
and Marc Stratton at Routledge, and to the three expert reviewers who
gave insightful feedback on my book proposal. I also need to acknowledge
the two large research projects on which I have worked over the last three
years at Newcastle University – Critical Heritages of Europe: Performing &
Representing Identities in Europe (funded by the European Commission1)
and Plural Heritages of Istanbul: the Case of the Land Walls (Newton Fund2).
new igexnp rep df
Acknowledgements ix
Both of these have provided opportunities for professional and intellectual
development, for gaining new perspectives, and learning new methods and
approaches. They have also led me to meet a long list of new people who
have become good friends and important reference points, and here I single
out Mads Daugbjerg, Chiara de Cesari, Cem Hakverdi, Ayhan Kaya, Troels
Myrup Kristensen, Vinnie Norskøv, Tom Schofield, Dan Foster- Smith, and
Ayşe Tecmen for inspiring and enriching my thinking. I am also grateful to
the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University for helping to fund
a final fieldwork trip.
Last but not least, thanks of a different order go to my sister, Başak
Bozoğlu, who hosted and looked after me during fieldwork, and my hus-
band, colleague, and sometime collaborator, Christopher Whitehead, for his
continuous support, encouragement, and endless curiosity about the past
and the present.
Notes

1 www.research.ncl.ac.uk/ cohere; grant agreement ID: 693289.
2 www.pluralheritages.ncl.ac.uk/ #/ about; grant number AH/ P005810/ 1.