Brown Bag: Exhibiting the Nation. Museums, Power and National Mythology in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Rule

Lorenzo Posocco - Exhibiting the Nation. Museums, Power and National Mythology in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) Rule

This presentation targets the political use of State-sponsored institutions in Turkey, in particular museums. A number of studies have pointed to the recent building of museums in Turkey as the cultural symbol of a political change that matches chronologically with the coming to power of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's party: the AK Party. New public museums (especially historical ones) built in the AKP era have been seen as rituals of the State that exhibited a new national ideology - Turkish Muslim Nationalism - aimed to build a new Turkey and new Turks. I will present a research that looked into three of these museums, investigating the links between the AKP, which promotes Turkish Muslim Nationalism, and new museums, which exhibit it.