From the 'democratization of history' thesis to fictional history

In the mid-2000s, with the rise of digitalization and the ability to access many types of archival materials more quickly and easily, a concept like the "democratization of history" emerged within discussions about the field of history. In short, it meant that the discipline of history should not remain solely in the hands of elites and governments/states, but should also be discussed, written, and taught in daily life. The widespread adoption and diversification of social media platforms since the 2010s have also made the issue of the "democratization of history" an increasingly important agenda item.

However, the point that was forgotten or not dwelled upon much was this: The discussion of history by the masses did not make it more democratic. (Just as the civilianization of Turkey did not directly democratize Turkey). I am not saying this in a traditional context, in other words, in the sense that only academic historians should study and discuss history. So what am I trying to say? 

First, I say this in the context of living in a “post-truth” era, where historical knowledge and discussions are increasingly detached from documents or facts. This is a global trend. In the context of Turkey, you can already see this in historical discussions on Twitter/X. It has reached such a point that academic historians have left their work aside and started to make efforts to prove that Atatürk did not die in Tripoli. We are in a period where we have started to read historical lies rather than historical knowledge, and speaking in terms of republican history, the political climate we are going through fuels this. Because there is no price to pay for "talking nonsense," especially about early republican history. On the contrary, it can even be profitable. 

Second, there is the interpretation of lived events, or even found documents, that we cannot call post-truth, but which are far from historical methodology and/or are interpreted in an ideological context. We can divide this into two. On one hand, there are amateurs who, with the excitement of being able to access documents digitally, interpret a piece of material out of context. Those who know, know; I have experienced this a lot in the issue of the Aegean islands, which is my own field of study. For example, a person finds a document stating that a country made an "island offer" to Turkey during the Second World War. This actually exists. Then they circulate it on social media and write history saying that they wanted to give these islands to Turkey, but Turkey did not want them. In this camp, we rarely see what happened in that year, what lay behind that offer, what was asked of Turkey in return, or why the decision-makers made their choices in that direction. In short, this is the quick circulation of a document, but it is not historiography. To be honest, the intentions of some of these people may not even be bad at times. 

However, on the other hand, distortion sometimes stems neither from a lack of knowledge of methodology nor from pure amateur excitement. Sometimes, it arises from politics bending and twisting things a little for its own ambitions. For example: "We fought together in Gallipoli—Turks, Kurds, Arabs, all of us." Yes, if this war was the war of a multi-national empire like the Ottoman Empire, we fought together. There is nothing more natural than this. But when you look at recruitment or the number of martyrs by province, you see that the Marmara, Aegean, and Western Black Sea regions played a major role, which is quite normal in a place where road and transportation facilities were not developed. But since the issue is sometimes the legitimization of Syrian refugees within Turkey and sometimes the production of consent for peace processes, we witness the political distortion of history at this point. 

Sometimes, we completely doubt the intentions of these works. For example, this weekend, in an online newspaper called Serbestiyet, Turkey's purchase of gas equipment in the 1930s was presented with the following headline: "A new document with declassified status regarding the Dersim Massacre: Gas filling equipment for bombs was purchased from Germany in 1937." What exactly do you understand when you read this headline? I think the person or outlet in question is trying to say this: "Turkey used poison gas in the operations. Moreover, it did this by purchasing it from Nazi Germany. (You know, the country that later slaughtered Jews in gas chambers). With this document, we have proven that Turkey was a racist, totalitarian country at that time." However, a few hours later, it emerged that the document was not newly declassified, that it was already accessible, that there was not a single reference to the Dersim operations in the document, and that these purchases were not related to the operations, as military historians also pointed out. The social media post disappeared. So much so that the newspaper had to apologize. Because, as they stated in their explanation, they had already quoted "research" from another newspaper. So why did they quote such research without questioning it? I think you can give the answer to this by looking at the explanations the newspaper made while deleting and revising the article. Because, even while admitting that they made a mistake, they were trying to prove that the dates of the purchase and the operations coincided by creating a timeline. From this, we understand that there is no reason for a similar situation not to happen in the future. Because this is a very conscious orientation.

Undoubtedly, Turkey's history has never been a wonderland. Defending this would also be a distortion. However, it seems that our "democratization of history," which started on the path of criticizing official history, has resulted in fictional history. The bad part is that we will watch these accelerate again due to the imposition of the conjuncture... I wish us all patience.