Irem Elbir

Vita

Irem Elbir received a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Administration and master’s degree in Media and Cultural Studies from Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She worked as a research assistant at Atılım University in Turkey. Currently, she is a PhD candidate at Europa Universität Flensburg, studying the relation between nostalgia and authoritarianism within the context of popular music culture.

Thema

Those were the Days: Nostalgia through the Lens of Popular Music Culture

"Many authoritarian regimes around the world use nostalgia by referring to their victorious past. The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) in Turkey uses Ottoman history and symbolism as a main source of legitimacy in order to assert that since the party has come to power, the country has changed for the better. Throughout the AKP’s rule by now twenty-years, the party has constantly mobilized the collective emotions of the masses. A slogan utilized by the AKP, "New Turkey", implies the social and political orders under the party’s rule. The AKP states a rupture with the secularist past of the country. While the AKP and its supporters feel nostalgia for mostly the Ottoman Empire, there is also nostalgia for the "good old secular days" which corresponds to the 90s and early 2000s, i.e., "old Turkey". Moreover, the latter is felt by the laicistic/secular part of Turkish society. Hence, the project will focus on the nostalgic feelings of the secular part of the Turkish society."