In Turkish history the year 1980 signified both an end of a period and the outset of another. As a historic point of rupture in Turkey, the military coup of 1980 ended the political, socioeconomic, and cultural process of the 1960s and 1970s, on one hand, while starting a new period of neoliberalism that was translated to the Turkish context as “a new ethos, which combined political authoritarianism with ‘competitive individualism’,” on the other (pp. 74–5). In her book, Pelin Başcı analyzes twenty-eight coup films and three television serials narrating coup stories that reflect this dual characteristic of the coup. She examines these films not only as artistic productions but also as “one of the key sites of [Turkey’s] popular appraisal” of its military coups as social traumas specifically constituting the public memory of the 1980 military intervention (p. 2). While based on interpretations of films and television serials, Başcı’s study goes well beyond the boundaries of film and media studies and presents the reader with an interdisciplinary example of cultural studies situated in a historical framework.

Social Trauma and Telecinematic Memory travels between the related concepts of memory and trauma centered upon the theme of the military coup. In this journey the historical process is always in the background. The book is based on the interpretation of coup films and television serials released and broadcast between 1982 and 2010. Başcı analyzes these coup films in a historical context, underlining the varying characteristics of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. As society changed over these decades the course and narratives of the coup films also transformed. Films from the 1980s were created under the shadow of military intervention and censorship and remained in the back seats of the cinema. The 1990s provided the films with a more industrialized cultural framework; however, the coup films still lacked popular recognition. Being produced after an authoritarian intervention, the films of the 1980s and 1990s “emanated melancholy, and a sense of hopelessness and darkness,” along with a longing for a bygone period and reactions against a new one (p. 269). These films criticize both the authoritarianism initiated by the military coup and individualism and consumerism that followed the introduction of neoliberalism. By contrasting the experiences of violence, grief, and incarceration of the coup period with post-1980 images of consumption under a market economy, coup films of the 1980s and 1990s narrate nostalgia for the 1970s due to both the crushing coup and alienation of a changing society – coup traumas clash with post-coup estrangement.

A new path for coup films opened in the late 1990s when new public discussions on history and, specifically, military coups raised questions on national history and identity. In such an atmosphere of rising ideological debate, coup stories and the related trauma that had largely been swept under the rug thus far became popular subjects for cinema; the public demanded to remember its national traumas in its quest for democratic reform in politics. The 2000s also brought a closer contact between television and cinema strengthened by the Internet, a cultural environment of collective remembrance and discussion in which coup films became mainstream productions. This environment initiated a transition of coup stories on camera from marginal “contraband or low-budget films recorded for rental on video” under censorship, risk of incarceration, and torture in the 1980s to popular films that “could be consumed at home, on video, on demand, digitally” in the 2000s (p. 81). In this regard, Başcı’s book presents the reader with a multilayered analysis that brings together the cultural production, its historical context, and the public reaction, contextualizing not only the coup films but also the reception of them by the public.

Başcı interprets the emergence and proliferation of coup films as the rise of public memory around the military intervention of 1980; in other words, as an act of remembrance rather than an attempt to reanimate the past. These films represent an alternative current of memory against an official discourse that dominated historical narratives until the appearance of new public discussions on military coups in the 2000s. This dominant narrative described the coup of 1980 as a brief intervention that ended the political strife and economic downfall of the 1970s and started a bright journey of liberal democracy and neoliberal economy for Turkey. The coup films act against this official version of history that not only burnished the image of the coup but also cloaked and denied the social and personal traumas it created. Therefore, in her book, Başcı underlines the public role of the coup films: undermining the authority of official history, opening a new track of public recollection, and raising new debates about the past and the present. These coup films “question […] and unfix […] the historical closures imposed by the state,” while they put specific emphasis on “remembering and retelling” the experiences that have been suppressed (p. 183). Başcı states that in this way coup films, especially in the 2000s, have become crucial contributors to public opinion. However, this contribution remains underanalyzed. While the book meticulously scrutinizes the contents and perspectives of coup films and how they have corresponded to rising public debates about democracy in Turkey, it falls short in explaining how and to what extent these films have affected the public.

The tool that coup films utilize to destroy the assumptions of official history and construct a new public memory is the unveiling and presentation of suppressed elements of the trauma of the coup of 1980. As leakages of testimonies through an official wall of silence, coup films narrate individual experiences of imprisonment, exile, torture, and social alienation of the early 1980s, hitherto not publicly spoken. However, in most of these films the trauma of September 12 is not handled in a historical vacuum but is employed as a gateway both to the past and the present. In several films the trauma of the coup evokes the memories of other national traumas that occurred before and after 1980, such as the population exchange between Turkey and Greece in Time of the Hunt (1987) and The Other Side of the Water (1991), or the Kurdish question in The Way (1982). In another example, a blunt one, the epilogue of the TV serial, Remember, My Darling (2006–8), portrays images from several historical moments of violence, conflict, and destruction (like the fire and killings in the Madımak Hotel in 1993 or post-1980 feminist protests against sexual violence), emphasizing the fact that the violence and trauma of 1980 did not end with the coup but spread over time with consequences. As Başcı indicates, the coup films stage “a historical continuum of traumas” in which the coup is portrayed as a break in the nation’s history, a traumatic rupture that has predecessors in the past and reflections in the present (p. 100).

In picturing the coup, a common motif that almost every coup film uses is that of childhood. Several coup films cast a child character, base their stories on children, or reflect upon the issues of childhood, youth, and growing-up. The coup films herein use the concept of childhood to symbolize the past of the nation both with its traumas and youthfulness, to stress the traumatic effects of the 1980 coup as an abrupt transition to adulthood, to contrast pre-coup times of childhood with post-coup trauma-ridden adulthood of the nation, and to imagine a better future uninterrupted by military authoritarianism. Several coup films parallel the military despotism of 1980 that hit the nation’s citizens with the authoritarianism of parents shattering the lives, dreams, and innocence of their children. Therefore these reflections on childhood also act as criticisms against authoritarian interventions in the past and present, within the family and nation. As to the future, the figure of a child or the concept of childhood provides the tool to envisage “the child within,” “a utopia fallen, but not lost,” in other words, a story that goes beyond the coup and its traumas, both in personal stories and national history (p. 279). While the motif of childhood supplies the films with a means to remember and convey the hidden traumas, it also provides an exit from trauma by not only narrating a story of dreams, hopes, and optimism but also demanding a public revision of national history and identity. In other words, in these films childhood becomes a metaphorical ground upon which the urge to remember and reassess is articulated.

Therefore the films and TV serials that Başcı analyzes in her book trace the social trauma hidden behind the official façade of the 1980 coup demanding a public remembrance to overcome the official historical narrative and expose its illusions and gaps. Such a public revision of history opens the gate for a new understanding of national identity as well as a new future projection for the nation. In the coup films the past is more than a telecinematic subject, but a tool, indeed a useful one. The history of the 1980 coup and the trauma it created provide these films with a “usable past” upon which criticism of authoritarianism, an attack against official account of history, and a demand for a more democratic future are situated (p. 20). The coup films focus the camera on people and their experiences, dreams, defeats, and traumas with the aim of asking bigger questions of history, identity, and authoritarianism.

Overall, Pelin Başcı’s book skillfully analyses the coup films and how they have affected the public memory of the 1980 coup, emphasizing the common cinematic patterns of trauma unearthed and childhood. What makes this book remarkable is that it provides the reader with a comprehensive and multilayered analysis bringing together the content of the films, their historical settings, and their audiences. This analysis might be further strengthened by a more thorough exploration of public reception, going beyond a discussion on spectatorship statistics. Standing at a point where past, present, and future intersect, the book exhibits how the films about the past have constructed the memory of the present and urged discussions about the potential that the future holds. Başcı adeptly demonstrates that cinema has the power to defy official narratives and disturb conventional accounts of identity and history while constructing a new public discourse through the depiction of the suppressed. Social Trauma and Telecinematic Memory reminds us of the refreshing notion that cinema has the power to rewrite history. Despite the all-pervading authority of official history that silences memories, “[c]hildren remember, and grow up to tell stories” (p. 196).