Studying social change in Turkey through fear feeling with film sample (1950-1999)

This dissertation is the first Turkish study to examine a historical period from the standpoint of historiography of emotions. The study's objective is to analyze how people's emotions reflect the political, economic, social, and cultural/intellectual development that occurred in Turkiye in the second half of the 20th century. In response to the question of how the emotion of fear and its derivatives may explain social development, this thesis, which is a contribution to social history studies, suggests a novel approach. By identifying its multipliers for historical knowledge, fear—a neurobiological concept—is therefore extricated from the category of positive sciences and historically contextualized. Since fear is a basic feeling felt in every civilization and has a significant impact on both private and public life, it has been selected as the research topic for this study. "How did the perception of fear alter in the Republic of Turkiye in the second half of the 20th century?" is the central question of this study. Around this query, it was debated how and why the nature, representation, causes, and forms of the fear elements changed over time and the significance of this societal development was analyzed. In order to track the evolution of fear over time, a sample of films was chosen as the primary data set for this study. Between the years 1950-1999, one hundred films were selected among the films with high representation power, two films per year. The information gathered from this cluster was gathered, coded, and given historical context by creating connections between concepts. The examination's patterns, which reflected the zeitgeist, highlighted three distinct historical periods: 1950–1965, 1966–1979, and 1980–1999. The depictions of each era are addressed separately in this study. As a result, the people who were left alone due to migration patterns in the 1950s felt more fortitude and patience in the face of their worries about the city. The 1970s saw the feelings of struggle and sacrifice come to the fore as conflicting issues like the rich and the poor and the fear of division were assessed through family togetherness. The anxieties of societal systems collapsing throughout the years 1980–1999 were formed by the values of honor in the 1980s and freedom in the 1990s. In Turkiye, the direction of social change developed in favor of individualism over the study period, and values and attitudes altered in line with this development, according to the study's findings. This means that the aspects that are feared to disappear over time gradually acquired an individual quality.