2006

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2015/HUM54/files/original/5dfb0187c8e4ff6320fa0b234174e34b.jpeg

Dolmabahce Palace at waterfront

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2015/HUM54/files/original/86927af4eb51deef73b489dfedab1360.jpeg

Interior of the Palace of Dolmabahce

In June 2006, the Turkish government hosted a series of ceremonies and exhibitions at the Dolmabahce Palace to celebrate its 150th anniversary. Over the course of the year the Palace hosted a number of guided tours focusing on specific components of the Palace’s history, like “Dolmabahce Palace Carpets.” The Palace was also the site of several major celebrations, including a concert with a “repertoire of music performed at the palace in the past.” The culmination of the yearlong activities was an international symposium that presented “recent research on the palace and its role and importance during the Ottoman and Republican eras as well as the social land political atmosphere, traditions and rules dominating the palace since 1856.”[1]

In such commemorative acts, we see an attempt to salvage the intentional memorial significance of the Dolmabahce Palace under the official gestural schema of modern Turkey. These anniversary events use the tools of “history” as defined by Nora, laboring to bring the study of the past into a formalized and institutionalized coherent schema that can affect collective memory. They historicize the Palace and offer a narrative that seeks rosy intellectual tone.

Perhaps we can also read a small unintentional narrative into the anniversary events: that they represent the desired style of memorialization in the 21st century, a style examines histories politics, culture, and social unrest salve to future conflict.