https://doi.org/10.1177/17506980211033334 Memory Studies 1–21 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/17506980211033334 journals.sagepub.com/home/mss Collective memory and the populist cause: The Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Turkey Meral Ugur-Cinar and Berat Uygar Altınok Bilkent University, Turkey Abstract This article focuses on how political actors appropriate the past by utilizing collective traumas for their populist cause. We demonstrate how the Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Turkey and the oppression of military interventions, for which it served as a backyard, became a tool for the AKP’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi- Justice and Development Party) populist agenda. Through a particular narration of history embedded in the museum, the AKP aimed to forge an internal frontier within the society between an envisioned homogenous body of people on the one hand and the elite on the other. Situating itself as the people’s authentic voice against this elite, the AKP tried to further its popular appeal and legitimize its extension of power. What appeared as coming to terms with the past was instead the instrumentalization of the past for a singular political agenda, eager to remove the complexities and pluralism of the past for the sake of telling a politically useful story. Keywords collective memory, museums, populism, trauma, Turkey This article explores the populism and collective memory nexus through the case of the Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Ankara, Turkey. We look at how through the Ulucanlar Prison Museum, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-AKP) stylized traumatic aspects of Turkish history in order to further its populist appeal and extend its power base. While the existing literature gives us invaluable insight into the role of collective memory in the construction and contestation of political identity (see, e.g. Art, 2006; Assmann, 1995; Berger and Niven, 2014; Eyerman, 2004; Kansteiner, 2002; Olick, 1999; Zerubavel, 1995), the relationship between pop- ulism and collective memory has so far not received sufficient attention. 1 Populism, whose main elements are a Manichean anti-establishment discourse, vertical ties to a leader by-passing institutions, and a mass support base, 2 is simultaneously an associative and Corresponding author: Meral Ugur-Cinar, Political Science Department, Bilkent University, Main Campus, Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences Building, 06800 Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey. Email: meral.ugur@bilkent.edu.tr 1033334MSS 0 0 10.1177/17506980211033334Memory StudiesUgur-Cinar and Altınok research-article 2021 Article