DONDENA Seminar - Gizem Arikan

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“When Commemoration Backfires: Commemorative Exclusion and Minority Electoral Mobilization” 

SPEAKER: Gizem Arikan (Trinity College Dublin) 

ABSTRACT: Commemorative practices shape collective understandings of legitimate authority, identity, and political violence, and governments routinely use them to impose majority narratives at the expense of minorities. We introduce the concept of commemorative exclusion—state commemoration that privileges the majority group's narrative while rendering minority experiences invisible—and argue that it provokes political backlash among minorities by heightening identity salience and perceptions of discrimination. We test this using Turkiye's practice of naming public schools after Turkish citizens killed in the ongoing conflict with Kurdish insurgents. Using a difference-in-differences design with granular administrative and electoral data, we show that school namings increase pro-Kurdish party support and turnout in the Kurdish region. Survey evidence from two sources corroborates the proposed mechanisms. From Confederate school names to Francoist street names, exclusionary state commemoration is widespread; our findings suggest that rather than binding divided societies together, it deepens ethnic cleavages and mobilizes electoral opposition.

BIO: Gizem Arikan is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin. Her main fields of study are political psychology and political attitudes, with focus on religiosity, authoritarian values, democratic attitudes and attitudes towards immigration. Her research has been published in American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Political Psychology, Journal of Peace Research and Nature Cities among others. She is also the winner of Turkish Academy of Sciences 2015 Young Scientist Outstanding Achievement Award and Science Academy Young Scientist Award 2016.