Reader's Guide

The organized attack that took place in Istanbul's Taksim Square on 16 February 1969, claiming two lives, is known in Turkish political history as Kanlı Pazar [Bloody Sunday]. Nationalist-conservative circles also refer to this attack as "Şanlı Pazar" [Glorious Sunday].

On 16 February, leftist and socialist groups marching from Beyazıt to Taksim to protest the U.S. Sixth Fleet came under attack from groups that had gathered in Taksim behind headlines reading "The Time Has Come to Strangle the Reds" and calls to jihad. Ali Turgut Aytaç and Duran Erdoğan lost their lives in the events, and more than two hundred people were wounded. Years later, some of the period's own actors would state that the attack had been organized, and that those who organized it had acted under the state's "tutelage" and direction.

Kanlı Pazar sits at the crossroads of a period in which the earlier divide seen as "nationalist-conservative" versus "communist" evolved into "right" versus "left" in Turkey, and in which the divisions within the right and the left themselves became more pronounced. The traces and the parties to these divisions can be seen clearly in Kanlı Pazar.

Kanlı Pazar is also significant as the first mass-killing attempt in Turkish political history. This massacre can be regarded as one of the most visible breaking points of the anticommunism rising — or being raised — in Turkey at the end of the 1960s, of the Cold War atmosphere, of political polarization, and of right-nationalist-conservative mobilization. The tensions that took shape around the period's newspapers, political organizations, student movements, religious circles, and state institutions, and the paramilitary groups formed around them, are also valuable for tracing the roots of the political violence of later years.

Another reason making Kanlı Pazar visible matters is that it allows the traces of many present-day political actors — particularly those on the right and in conservative circles — to be traced back in time. Approaching Turkish political history as this kind of whole also gives readers the information and the means for new assessments and analyses.

Despite the years that have passed, Kanlı Pazar retains its significance for debates in Turkey over memory, political violence, impunity, and social polarization. The event is seen not merely as a historical rupture that took place in the past, but as one of the symbolic headings under which different political traditions relate to their own histories.

The "Living Edition" claims to bring a new perspective to history, and to political history in particular. It rejects the assumption that the events it examines simply happened in the past and came to an end, considering them instead in relation to both what came before and what came after, and treating the "historiography" of the parties involved as itself a matter to be questioned.

Because it, too, sits at the crossroads of new divisions and formations, Kanlı Pazar offers an important example for a "Living Edition" project. The last decade in particular has made it more clearly visible that Kanlı Pazar is not simply an event that happened in the past. As stated in the Preface: "How it is remembered and retold, which of its facets are made visible and which fade over time, have become as much a part of the research as the event itself. New testimonies, television programs, documentaries, newspaper archives, pamphlets, photographs, and statements made years later all made it necessary to reopen this work."

For that reason, what you are reading is no longer just a republication of the 2012 book. It has been reconceived as an open-ended field of research — one that expands with new documents and testimonies, and that tries to make visible its own gaps, omissions, and contradictions. A printed book is finished at a given moment; a digital format, by contrast, allows the work to develop over time, to be transformed by new additions, and to be discussed anew.

This project takes as its backbone the book Kanlı Pazar / Nationalists, Islamists, and the Left in 1960s Turkey, published in 2012, and rises upon it as a living edition, continuing to develop over time through new documents, photographs, testimonies, interviews, and corrections.

The Living Edition is also open to contributions from its readers. Readers can send in information and documents in their possession, leave comments, and submit correction requests. Through all these efforts, this project ceases to be a fixed text and becomes a digital space of memory — open to further research, capable of expanding, and able to develop through new contributions.

This site is the expanded, continually updated digital version of the Kanlı Pazar book. While the main chapters follow the structure of the book, documents, photographs, interviews, testimonies, and corrections added over time have been placed within the relevant chapters.

Content added to the site later is marked with amber-colored boxes. Through these boxes, you can access newspaper clippings, pamphlets, archival documents, PDF files, and images. The "Read more" button inside each box opens the full text.

The "Updates" page lists new content added to the site over time in chronological order, while the "Media" section brings together visual and archival material both from the book and added later. Reviews, interviews, and pieces published about the book and the project are gathered in the "Reviews" section.

New additions are listed in each chapter's sidebar under the heading "Recent Updates."

For readers examining Kanlı Pazar for the first time, the main chapters are the best place to start. The chapters are ordered to follow the book's narrative flow, taking up the event's historical background step by step.

Readers interested in documents, newspaper clippings, posters, and visual material can go directly to the "Media" section. New content, corrections, and testimonies added to the site later are gathered together on the "Updates" page.

For those wishing to examine earlier assessments and commentary on the book or the event, the "Reviews" section has been prepared; for a listing of the sources used, see the "Bibliography" section.