Constructing National Identity Through Museums in Early Republican Turkey: Historical Narrative, Spatial Transformation, Exhibiting Modernity, and Monumentality

Abstract

This article examines the role of museums in the construction of national identity during the Early Republican Period in Turkey (1923-1950). Drawing on theoretical approaches that interpret museums as spaces in which collective memory and national identity are materially organized and publicly communicated, the study analyzes museums as key sites through which the ideological foundations of the new nation-state were articulated. The study adopts a qualitative historical approach based on document analysis of representative primary and secondary sources and proposes an analytical interpretation derived from a comparative reading of museum practices and institutional transformations. Its principal original contribution lies in identifying four operational analytical categories: historical narrative, spatial transformation, exhibiting modernity, and monumentality that clarify the structural functions of museums in the nation-building process. Museums are interpreted as spaces through which national identity was constructed along several interconnected dimensions. First, museums functioned as spaces of national memory in which a newly constructed historical narrative was materialized and communicated. Second, the transformation of Ottoman palaces and religious environments into museums symbolized the political and ideological rupture between empire and republic. Third, museums contributed to the dissemination of painting and sculpture as visible expressions of modernization. Finally, museums acquired monumental meanings and functioned as symbolic environments representing the founding leaders and ideals of the Republic. Taken together, these dimensions demonstrate how museums functioned as key cultural spaces through which national identity was structured and communicated in the Early Republican state.