Post-Kemalist Zamanlarda Pop-Kemalizm: 90'lar Türkiyesi'nde Popüler Kültür

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between the popular culture explosion that took place in Turkey in the nineties and Kemalism. Popular culture tools, which started to rise in the nineties, also influenced ideologies and transformed the forms of discourse. The rise of the Political Islam and the Kurdish Movement in the mentioned period gave rise to the concerns of division in the society and the increase of anti-secular discourse. While all these were happening, criticism against Kemalism began to increase within the academy, and some circles began to be seen as responsible for these elements of danger. Popular culture, which has risen as a result of neoliberal economic policies and capitalist market dynamics, has created a space for itself in almost every part of daily life and has increased its manifestations by supporting each other with the market. At this point, Kemalism, whose former hegemonic influence began to decline, needed the tools and functionality of popular culture in order to adapt to the period. Kemalism is a set of thought systems that have been accepted as the official ideology of modern Turkey since 1946. Since the establishment of the Republic, Kemalism, which has been integrated with the motive of establishing a modern and contemporary nation-state, has been subjected to many different interpretations until today, but it is still difficult to make a clear definition in the literature. In this study, what is wanted to be brought to the literature is not to explain what Kemalism is, but to explain how it was perceived in Turkey, especially in the nineties. In the process until the end of the nineties, along with the post-Kemalist paradigm that saw Kemalism as a problem of not being democratized, a voluntary love discourse emerged from the people. This discourse embodies a pop ideology, namely pop-Kemalism, through popular culture tools. Pop-Kemalism refers to the spontaneous, ideologue-free, voluntary adoption of popular cultural tools as a political discourse. In this context, pop music singers, pop music songs and clips, and the popularization of classical music by gaining a political discourse mission were examined. Pop Kemalism, which has become an unofficial political discourse, has emerged as a reaction against the dangers of instability, division and reactionism within the country and post-Kemalist criticism, and has expanded the form and scope of discourse through popular culture tools.