Tuzunoglu, M: Anesthetic Memory Loss: Military Coup as a Vis

The 1980 military coup in Turkey was the manifestation of physical coercion of the military-state, repressing and subjugating the members of society through violence, arrests, tortures and death penalties. The effects of this traumatic event led to a silenced society and forms of collective avoidance of expressing the memories of the coup, creating ‘secrecy‘ for the post-1980 period. In the year 2004, however, a series of ‘coup films‘ emerged, for the first time, giving a visual expression to this key event. My thesis explores the mechanisms which determined the after-coup period, and examines its current mnemonic representation within the films. The study, based on content analysis of five films ‘Vizontele Tuuba‘ (2004), ‘Babam ve Oglum‘(My Father and Son, 2006), ‘Beynelmilel‘ (International, 2006), ‘Eve Donus‘(Return to Home, 2007) and ‘Zincirbozan‘(2007), inquires into the representations of mechanisms of silence/secrecy, repression and ideology which have also negatively affected the expression and formation of collective memory. While the films do not merge into a uniform collective memory scheme, this study also opens up further questions of commerciality of the coup films.