Remembering to Forget: Sublimation as Sacrifice in War Memorials

According to Danto (1985) memorials and monuments are two different entities. While the former is about remembering, mourning and healing, the latter is usually celebratory and triumphalist. However Rowlands (1999) finds this distinction problematic and claims that nationalist war 'memorials' have the capacity to turn traumatic individual deaths into acts of national celebration through collective values. At the end of the mourning process, memorials become monuments. According to Freud, the death of the significant others are experienced as externalized violence against the unity of identification and the mourning process -the preservation and continuation of death into life- introjects the absent loved one into the foundation of the ego. 

Rowlands (1999) claims that the mourning is possible through the visual imagery of war memorials which let us experience Platonic repetition as synthesis in architectural form. This experience transcends personal trauma and reterritorializes the ego in collective ideals. However, there is a powerful subjection to the nation-state as sacrificer.

According to Rowlands (1999) sacrifice "justifies the taking of significant forms of life for an ulterior symbolic purpose" and is connected to other ritual forms like trance and spirit possession: "The inevitable but painful act of mass death is internalized as a justifiable act of ritual killing carried out by the high priests or priestesses as a dedication to the nation."

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Erdogan giving election speech leaning on a coffin and promoting martyrdom / Erdogan instrumentalizing martyrdom to justify war:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-turkey-media/turkish-magazine-raided-copies-seized-for-mock-erdogan-selfie-idUKKCN0RE1AK20150914
https://t24.com.tr/yazarlar/hakan-aksay/vicdansizlikta-son-asama-tabuta-dayanarak-oy-istemek,12550

Erdogan promoting martyrdom and war to small children

https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2018/02/25/erdogan-little-girl-reservists/

Erdogan, Dis-connecting People: New Zealand Massacre (2019) and Gallipoli War (1916)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-20/australian-pm-slams-erdogan-s-coffins-comment-after-massacre
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/20/turkeys-president-sparks-diplomatic-row-warning-anti-muslim/

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In Turkish context, sacrifice is not justified only with patriotism and nationalism but also with Islam. Although there is no ethos of dying to cleanse the sins of the others in Islam, martyrdom is an important instrument for Turkish Military and also for the state because of its religious importance. It's widely used by president Erdogan in order to justify the operations against PKK (and Kurdish civilians) in Turkey and Syria. (edirnekapıdan şehit aktarımı). Lastly it's used again to stop a coup attempt and to justify the civil deaths. During the night of July 15, Erdogan was on TV via the mobile screen of a TV speaker and made a call for everybody to go on the streets in order to defend "democracy". So, he basically put unarmed citizens in front of the Turkish Army with heavy weapons, tanks and F-16s. 250 citizens and ....soldiers were announced to be dead officially. After the event, numerous monuments started to be built around Turkey (img 1.) mostly by municipalities and two monuments are built as official state memorials for the martyrs of July 15. One of them is to be found on the Bosphorus Bridge where ... people were killed. The name of the bridge is changed on....2016 as July 15 Martyrs Bridge and a "Martyrs' Maqam" is built on it together with a museum, which exposes the TV speakers' mobile phone as an object of memory.

Rowlands asserts that the essential justification of war memorials is that they have to allow the resolution of suffering and show that "they did not die in vain". However, the semiotic analysis of the J15 monuments shows us that the triumphalism and the emphasis on national unity is much stronger than the individual suffering of the people. Even in some cases, the monuments are directly propaganda for AKP and Erdogan.

If we analyse the commemorative rituals between 2016-2019....





















Rowlands, M. (1999) Remembering to Forget: Sublimation as Sacrifice in War Memorials. In: Forty, A and Kuechler, S, (eds.) The Art of Memory. (pp. 129-145)