Politicization of recent Turkish history: (ab)use of history as a political discourse in Turkey

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how history has been used as a political discourse by the current ruling elites of Turkey in the post-2010 period. In doing that, the article first defines what the politicization of history is and locates the Justice and Development Party’'s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) perception of history within the broader conservative political movements in Turkey. Then, the article focuses on the discourses of some AKP politicians and pro-AKP journalists to show how the AKP has been using history as a discourse to create a binary opposition between the Unionist/CHP mentality and the AKP mentality and to label the latter as the source of all current political troubles of Turkey.