CULTURAL AMNESIA AND ORHAN PAMUK’S VISION OF TURKEY IN ISTANBUL: MEMORIES OF THE CITY
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55197/qjssh.v7i3.830Keywords:
Turkey, orhan Pamuk, cultural amnesia, Istanbul, Ottoman empireAbstract
This paper discusses Turkey’s novelist Orhan Pamuk, and his book Istanbul: Memories of the City in 2006. Pamuk is well-informed about the historical topics he handles in his non-fiction book Istanbul: Memories and the City of 2003. He employs a vast knowledge accumulated through extensive readings to address a variety of topics, some of which are controversial. One of the recurrent topics he is concerned with is the prevailing state of melancholy in Turkey, which he links to the decline and fall of the great Ottoman Empire. He wants his people to change how they look at the past: rather than attempting to relive the past and, failing to do so, experiencing melancholy, they should use it to engage in a thought-provoking examination and assessment of it. Pamuk laments the authorities’ neglect of his lovely town, Istanbul, and worries that the city will lose its importance and beauty due to its poverty, shabbiness, and isolation. This paper employs the Cultural Amnesia theoretical framework that Halimah Mohamed Ali and Aina Nabila Ahmad created in their essay “Tracing Cultural Amnesia in Sara Suleri’s Meatless Days” of 2017.
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Copyright (c) 2026 MOHAMMED ABDULLAH HUSSEIN, MOHAMAD LUTHFI ABDUL RAHMAN, NADIATUL SHAKINAH ABDUL RAHMAN, HALIMAH MOHAMED ALI, ZAID MAHIR
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
