Chapter 4 How Do We Tell Difficult Stories in Difficult Times?

• Pages: 82-116
• Author: Kerem Çiftçioğlu

How Do We Tell Difficult Stories

in Difficult Times?

Kerem Çiftçioğlu

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83

How Do We Tell Dicult Stories in Dicult Times?

Introduction

One day, I was sitting in a café with two good friends from high school,

discussing politics as usual. I was excited about the new things I was

learning at university and eager to tell them: “You know, early years

of the Republic weren’t just about progress, revolution, and positive

things. There were some horrible state crimes committed too.” I was

naïve and unrefined. I gave this new information with the emotional

enthusiasm of a young kid who, when he discovers new music, asks

his friends impatiently to listen to it. As is often the case, my friends

weren’t ready to accept what I offered.

As a member of a generation born after the 1980 military coup

d’état, and coming from a secular, upper middle-class family, it was

during my university studies in the early 2000s that I first encountered

a different narrative about the history of modern Turkey. I was blown

away by the revisionist presentations in courses about this period and

about Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the army officer who founded the Re-

public of Turkey.1 I could have cast a blind eye on these new stories, but

I chose not to. I now wonder, why? Thinking back, I guess it had some-

thing to do with the way I was introduced to them. In the history we

learned in primary school and high school, the narratives were rigid,

serious, and made no space for my own opinions. The approaches at

university, however, were interesting, engaging, and non-judgmental.

I felt both uneasy at the collapse of the narrative I knew and curious to

learn more.

I was convinced that part of the struggle for democracy was about

creating conditions conducive for people to feel open and curious

about learning new things. In the context of human rights, this meant

1 Inocialdiscourse,Mustafa KemalAtatürkalmostsingle-handedlyde-

feated the forces sent by the Allies and emerged victorious from what is today

referred as the Turkish War of Independence of 1923.

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Kerem Çiftçioğlu

being open to learning alternative narratives about the past. That’s why

I have always had a particular interest in how to convey difficult topics

in ways that trigger curiosity and creative reflection. Today, I’m in a

privileged position to work towards that objective in my current role

as the Outreach and Advocacy Officer for the Truth Justice Memory

Center(HafızaMerkezi).2

HafızaMerkeziis anNGOsetupin 2011toadvocate forcoming

to terms with past atrocities in Turkey. In our work, we focus on the

enforced disappearances of the 1990s that occurred during the armed

conflict between the Turkish military and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party

(PKK).3 We work to uncover the truth about the disappearances, sup-

port families in their pursuit of justice, and contribute to a collective

memory about these crimes.

In this chapter, I will discuss how different forms of visual sto-

rytelling can help create new spaces for learning and societal reflec-

tion, allowing us to reach out to a larger audience in our human rights

work.InrelationtoourworkatHafızaMerkezi,Iwilldiscussthefield

ofmemorializationinparticular— afield that,throughouttwentieth

century, has been increasingly used for telling the long-denied stories

of grave human rights violations.

AtHafızaMerkezi, weare already experimentingwith engaging

creative disciplines to produce new ideas for storytelling. Of course,

this new engagement is taking place in a deteriorating political context

in Turkey, as the developments following the failed Kurdish–Turk-

ish peace process create new challenges that make our demands even

more relevant. The lack of short-term prospects in the legal and politi-

cal domains led us to explore the role of culture and the arts in making

our demands visible. From the perspective of our work, this means

thinkingaboutthe role of memorialization in comingto terms with

past crimes.

First, I will present background information to explain the current

political context in Turkey, including the opening and closing of civil

spacessincetheJusticeandDevelopmentParty(AKP)cametopower

in 2002. Second, I offer basic definitions and concepts in the field of

2 HafızaMerkezi’swebsitecanbe foundhere:https://hakikatadalethafiza.

org/en/

3 During this period, government military and security forces forced hun-

dreds of thousands of people to abandon their villages, extra-judicially killed

civilians, and forcibly disappeared them. For an overview, read the background

sectioninthereportbyÖzgürSevgiGöral,AyhanIşık,andÖzlemKaya,“Un-

spoken Truth: Enforced Disappearances,” Truth Justice Memory Center (Haki-

katAdalet Hafıza Merkezi),2013, 14–23, https://hakikatadalethafiza.org/wp-

content/uploads/2015/02/Konusulmayan-Gercek_ENG.pdf.