The relations between memory, gender, and nation-state formation in Turkey can be best captured if their multiplicity is drawn out. This necessarily involves discussing the construction of gendered memories by the early republican elite in comparison with those produced by their “daughters” and looking at contemporary articulations of nostalgia in the identity formulation of different groups.

During the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the state emphasized a qualified Westernization with the aim of undercutting collective loyalties to the Ottom…