Reading of Everyday Life in Ankara with Oral History: Güvenevler Neighbourhood, 1950-1980
This study tries to understand Ankara’s social and daily life in the period from 1950 to 1980 by focusing on the Güvenevler neighbourhood and more specifically on the accounts of the inhabitants of Güneş Sokak. The study utilizes the existing body of academic literature concerning the recent history...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Koc University, Vehbi Koc Ankara Studies Research Center (VEKAM)
2020-06-01
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| Series: | Ankara Araştırmaları Dergisi |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://jag.journalagent.com/jas/pdfs/JAS_8_1_105_125.pdf |
| Summary: | This study tries to understand Ankara’s social and daily life in the period from 1950 to 1980 by focusing on the Güvenevler neighbourhood and more specifically on the accounts of the inhabitants of Güneş Sokak. The study utilizes the existing body of academic literature concerning the recent history of Ankara to examine the inhabitants of Güvenevler—which became one of the very first neighbourhoods after Yenişehir where the elite of the early Republican times resided—in terms of their familiarity to the urban life of the UlusÇankaya axis, as reported to-date in written and oral sources. This is a research of oral history conducted through semi-structured interviews, and based on places of daily life, which allows for an interpretation of Ankara’s social life in the light of the accounts of its first-hand witnesses. Hence, the direction of the limited amount of research on the recent history of Ankara has switched -this type of research previously relied on using public places or buildings, names in the public record or press resources- into the use of oral history techniques; this time with the unique focus on individuals who actually made history happen. The work is aiming at examining with whom the social and daily life of the capital, as indicated by the interviewees, was shared in the period of 1950-1980, determining how this was experienced, what sort of approval mechanisms—if any—were in operation, and discerning what kind of trends it displayed over time, in terms of habits. Findings of the article were evaluated with three themes of “City and Urban Culture,” “Working Life and Work,” and “the Gender of Memory: Ankara of the Women Interviewed” which emerged from the study and discussion of the accounts of the participants. “City and Urban Culture” provides detailed information concerning what kind of place Çankaya was, how relationships concerning belonging operated, with whom the participants of the study shared their neighbourhoods, and how they lived together. Under the second heading, the approaches of the interviewed group towards the notion of work were examined. From the very outset, the present research did not succeed in reaching male individuals enough; hence Ankara was to a great extent framed by the individual memories of women participants. |
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| ISSN: | 2147-8724 2147-8724 |