This article focuses on how political actors appropriate the past by utilizing collective traumas for their populist cause. We demonstrate how the Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Turkey and the oppression of military interventions, for which it served as a backyard, became a tool for the AKP’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Justice and Development Party) populist agenda. Through a particular narration of history embedded in the museum, the AKP aimed to forge an internal frontier within the society between an envisioned homogenous body of people on the one hand and the elite on the other. Situating itself as the people’s authentic voice against this elite, the AKP tried to further its popular appeal and legitimize its extension of power. What appeared as coming to terms with the past was instead the instrumentalization of the past for a singular political agenda, eager to remove the complexities and pluralism of the past for the sake of telling a politically useful story.

本文重点讨论政治行动者如何通过利用集体创伤来实现其民粹主义事业来利用过去。我们展示了土耳其的 Ulucanlar 监狱博物馆和作为后院的军事干预的压迫如何成为 AKP（Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Justice and Development Party）民粹主义议程的工具。通过嵌入博物馆的特定历史叙述，正发党旨在在社会内部建立一个内部边界，一方面是设想中的同质人群，另一方面是精英。正发党将自己定位为人民反对这些精英的真实声音，试图进一步扩大其对民众的吸引力，并使其权力的延伸合法化。