The early monumental statues of Atatürk in Turkey have so far been studied from the perspective of the state and its ambition to disseminate a national consciousness. While this state-centric approach has been helpful to understand the role of symbolism in nation-building, it ends up reducing people to a passive recipient of symbolic indoctrination. We, in contrast, approach public perception as an active component in the discursive construction of these monuments over time. We first analyse the period until the death of Atatürk in 1938 during which the democratic possibility of conflicting with the official narrative remained quite minimal. We then look at the aftermath of Atatürk's death, which coincides with the introduction of the multiparty democracy in Turkey where there were more critical engagements with these monuments, particularly by the right-wing constituents and politicians. We conclude that such resistance was still discursively bound by the nationalist context within which it operated. Our analysis of the politics of symbolism in Turkey taps into the theoretical works of Hanna Pitkin and Warren Breckman.

中文翻译：

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不仅仅是一个主权象征？土耳其阿塔图尔克早期纪念性雕像的公众招待会

迄今为止，土耳其的阿塔图尔克早期纪念性雕像已从国家及其传播民族意识的雄心的角度进行了研究。虽然这种以国家为中心的方法有助于理解象征主义在国家建设中的作用，但它最终使人们沦为象征性灌输的被动接受者。相比之下，随着时间的推移，我们将公众感知视为这些纪念碑的话语建设中的一个积极组成部分。我们首先分析直到 1938 年阿塔图尔克去世之前的这段时期，在此期间，与官方叙述发生冲突的民主可能性仍然很小。然后我们看看阿塔图尔克死后的后果，这与土耳其引入多党民主制度相吻合，在那里对这些纪念碑进行了更多的批评，尤其是右翼选民和政客。我们的结论是，这种抵抗仍然受到其运作的民族主义背景的话语约束。我们对土耳其象征主义政治的分析利用了汉娜·皮特金和沃伦·布雷克曼的理论著作。