Historiography, Memory, Belonging: An Appraisal on the Oral History Methodology And Its Use in Turkey

Abstract

Oral history, transcending the boundaries of the discipline of history, emerges as one of the most popular qualitative data collection methods of the twentieth century. Especially since the 1970s, there as on why oral history has become increasingly widespread and used within the various fields of social sciences and humanities is related to its potential for the reconstruction of the recent past. Oral history interviews not only allows to access the undocumented experiences of leaders, elected and appointed bureaucrats who were in decision-making bodies at the local, national and international level but also gives opportunity to include voices and experiences of workers, women, ethnic minorities, marginalized and disadvantaged groups in the narrative of history. Oral history has not only been widely used but also stringently criticized since the 1970s. Since the end of the 1980s, as a result of the secriticisms and the theoretical developments in humanities and social sciences, oral history has emerged as a method that contains different tendencies and interpretations and is nurtured by various disciplines. Oral history studies which started to gain momentum in Europe and North America in the 1960s was incorporated into the academic literature in Turkey in the early 1990s. Looking at the history of oral history in Turkey from the 1990s to the present, it is possible to argue that oral history studies focus on different historical backgrounds, events, and actors in order to write the past in a more inclusive way. However, when compared with the oral history studies conducted in both Western and non-Western geographies, it is observed that academic studies and oral history projects based on oral history in Turkey are both numerically very low and do not have enough subject diversity and plurality in approaches to reflect the potential of oral history. Thus, the purpose of this study is two folds: First, it examines what the oral history method is, why it emerged, how and why oral history studies transformed over years. Secondly, it maps out the landscape of oral history in Turkey. This study is based upon critical reading of the existing literature on oral history produced in Turkey and beyond.