Trauma, Historical Symbolism and the Return of the Repressed: The 15 July 2016 Coup Attempt in Turkey

Abstract

One of the most popular Turkish comedy programmes in the 1990s, the Levent Kırca show, had a sketch that lampooned a general and his soldiers trying to take control of a TV station. When the general tries to read the coup declaration, the screen goes into commercials, he loses his thread of thought, suffers a mental breakdown, and aborts the coup.