Experience value, counter-monument, narrative archive: The memory landscape of the railroaders in Türkiye

Abstract

This study inspects the railway landscape of Türkiye as a memory landscape, focusing on the spatial memory of the railway employees, known as the railroaders. The impetus for the study is based on the discovery of the internet blog Kent ve Demiryolu [City and Railway]. The blog was founded in 2007 by a group of railroaders as an open-source participatory platform in response to recent destructive practices against the railways. In the 20th century, the railway landscape in the country was largely shaped by the prevalence of construction practices. As part of the nationalistic policies of the Early Republican Period (1923-1950), the railways inherited from the Ottoman Empire were expanded into a nationally integrated network across the country through the implementation of accelerated construction and nationalization practices. The State Railways, which was established in 1927, established a railroaders' society with a national character and simultaneously produced a rich spatial network that would enrich the daily lives of its employees. Constructed in parallel with the railways, this reservoir included not only workspaces that served the professional lives of the employees but also in-house facilities that provided accommodation, recreation, education, and health services, ensuring a certain lifestyle and practices that mediated this lifestyle. This spatial reservoir, which had remained largely intact for decades, began to erode in the late 20th century, in line with the neoliberal policies of the authority. With the implementation of various railway regulations since the 1980s, the material landscape has undergone a process of deterioration. This has occurred concurrently with the dissolution of the railroaders' institutional organization. In this context, the notion of destruction is considered in a comprehensive manner that encompasses both the tangible and intangible elements of the railroaders' spatial memory. The blog, autonomously created at the threshold of memory and history, provides not only a counterstatement to destructive practices, but also fragments of a unique spatial memory narrative, rooted in constructions, and shaped by recent destructions. Building on these fragments, the study examines the railroaders' memory landscape through three concepts: memory, monument, and archive. The study expands each concept from traditional to contemporary notions through a cross-reading of a series of selected texts. The aim is to propose a statement on the relationship between the production of space and the production of memory in the 21st century. The thesis is comprised of two principal chapters. The initial chapter presents a theoretical framework, while the subsequent chapter elucidates the theory through a detailed examination of a case study. In the preceding chapter, the study (re)produces each of the three concepts (memory, monument, archive) as a 'category of oppositions' through a series of sub-concepts derived from the literature or generated anew. The theoretical core of the text is accompanied by a conceptual diagram illustrating the proposed relationships between these categories. In the subsequent chapter, the same triadic structure is employed to investigate the topography of the railroaders' memory landscape. The theoretical debate carries out a twofold analysis. First, it offers a contemporary understanding of spatial memory that puts special emphasis on the non-Cartesian, symbolic dimension of space. In this novel role, space is addressed in its transformation from a mere instrument to a context in the production of memory. Second, a parallelism is established between the oppositions of instrument//context and history//memory. In parallel, the study proposes 'landscape' as a counter-concept to 'architecture' and introduces 'experience value' as a novel concept to denote the symbolic dimension of space as a spatio-social terrain. Accordingly, the study employs 'counter-monument' and introduces 'narrative archive' as counter-concepts to 'monument' and 'archive'. Finally, the study proposes 'memory landscape' as an overarching umbrella concept to refer to the proposed counter-concepts. The concept is inspired by the vast expanse of the railway landscape and refers to active/creative memory environments, realms and practices. The thesis examines the railway as a holistic landscape with a focus on its symbolic dimension, offering an alternative to the prevalent literature that focuses on singular architectural elements and/or a typo morphological analysis. Furthermore, in contrast to the prevailing approach, which is oriented towards the construction of the railways, the study also engages with the recent destructions. Finally, it presents a unique image of the railway that has not yet been covered in the academic literature. This discovery opens new avenues of research, including the potential in the production of an alternative history of the railways in Türkiye.