CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Ilengiz, Cicek |
|---|---|
| Title | Monumentalizing Madness: A Depiction of the Rise and Demise of Dersim as a Center of the Left |
| Summary | This thesis focuses on the first statue of a madman in Turkey, which was erected in 1994 in Dersim (Tunceli), during the height of the civil war between the Partiya Karkêrn Kurdistan and the Turkish state. Following the story of Sey Uşen, a figure in between madness and holiness, this thesis portrays the rise and the demise of Dersim as a centre of the Left in Turkey. Depicting the ways in which the statue of Sey Uşen stands in negotiations with the monument of Atatürk, the founding father of the Turkish Republic, this thesis argues that the statue of Sey Uşen opens a ground to mourn for the ungrievable loss of the past. Along with offering a gendered analysis of the transformation of a madman into a religiously respected figure, it depicts the encounter of the Left with identity politics in the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork, it is argued that the state-sponsored policy of depoliticization towards Alevis is reproduced on a local level through discourses of culturalization by leftist inhabitants of Dersim. |
| Supervisor | Kowalski, Alexandra |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/ilengiz_cicek.pdf |
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