[OPINION] Erasing the archives: How authoritarian regimes wage war on memory

06.11.2025

By Turkish Minute

Source:https://www.turkishminute.com/2025/11/06/opinion-erasing-the-archives-how-authoritarian-regimes-wage-war-on-memory/

Adem Yavuz Arslan*

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”**

That line appeared as a party slogan in George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” It warned of a world where power depends on controlling memory. Today, its echo can be heard in Ankara’s corridors. Turkey’s authoritarian leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has accused his strongest political rival, İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, of “spying for the British” — a claim that many observers see as part of a broader campaign to silence dissent.

At the same time the government has seized one of the country’s few remaining independent broadcasters, TELE1, and immediately disabled access to its digital archive and YouTube channel — a symbolic act of erasing collective memory.

From Moscow to Ankara: the same logic of fear

Authoritarian regimes often begin with a promise of order and end with a war on memory. Joseph Stalin’s secret police confiscated private archives and edited photographs to erase political enemies from history. Mussolini’s fascist squads raided opposition newspapers like Avanti!, smashed the printing presses and burned the archives. Goebbels’ propaganda ministry turned the German press into the Führer’s trumpet and destroyed thousands of publications that didn’t sing the same tune. In each case the same fear drove them: the fear of evidence — of a written, recorded, documented truth that might outlive them.

Turkey’s version: from İpek Media to TELE1

On October 28, 2015, armored police vehicles surrounded the headquarters of İpek Media in İstanbul. Live on air, the newsroom was stormed; journalists were dragged out, cameras seized, and archives deleted. Within hours, Kanaltürk, Bugün TV and the Bugün and Millet newspapers had been placed under government-appointed “trustees” by court order. Independent journalism was literally switched off.

That morning was not an isolated attack — it was the beginning of a long campaign to erase Turkey’s independent media memory. During a crackdown that followed a failed coup in Turkey in 2016, Zaman, Samanyolu, the Cihan News Agency and dozens of local outlets met the same fate. Servers were wiped, printed archives confiscated and websites erased from public record. Years of investigative work — court files, corruption reports, photo evidence — vanished behind the phrase “for reasons of national security.”

Now, 10 years later, the same playbook is being used again — this time against TELE1, one of the few remaining critical voices on Turkish television. A government-appointed trustee took control, and within hours the channel’s online archives were disabled. Different decade, same logic.

The ‘trustee’ as the modern commissar

In Stalin’s USSR they were called “commissars.” In today’s Turkey, they are called “trustees.” Different titles, identical purpose: to control the story and destroy the evidence. A trustee doesn’t just seize property — he seizes the truth.

By taking over a newsroom, he takes over the narrative; by deleting its archives, he rewrites history. Each new trustee appointment is a quiet execution of public memory. An archive is not merely a collection of documents; it’s a reservoir of accountability. It remembers what power wants forgotten. That’s why dictators fear it more than opposition rallies or hashtags.

Hitler burned books; Stalin doctored photographs; Erdoğan’s regime deletes servers. Each method serves the same purpose — to kill memory before memory can testify.

When İpek Media was stormed in 2015, the world shrugged. Many in Turkey’s mainstream opposition dismissed it as “a problem for the Gülenists.” The Gülenists are followers of Fethullah Gülen, the late Muslim scholar who inspired a movement that once ran a broad network of schools, media outlets and charities in Turkey and abroad.

Erdoğan has been targeting the Gülen movement since corruption investigations in December 2013 implicated him as well as some members of his family and inner circle.

Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and a conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan began to target the movement’s members. He designated the movement as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and intensified the crackdown on it following an abortive putsch in July of the same year that he accused Gülen of masterminding. The movement strongly denies involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

Human rights groups describe the campaign as a form of political persecution that effectively sought to erase the movement from public life. Today, as the same machinery turns on secular or left-leaning outlets like TELE1, the country is learning — too late — that authoritarianism devours its critics one by one, but always in the same order.

A war on memory — and why it matters

Authoritarian power doesn’t fear journalists because of what they write today, but because of what they’ve already written. An erased archive means an erased history — and an erased history means impunity. Turkey’s decade-long assault on media archives is not just censorship. It’s a form of historical engineering — a deliberate attempt to manufacture national amnesia. And like every regime that came before, one day it will discover that memory, unlike data, cannot be permanently deleted.

Because as long as someone remembers — and writes — the archives still exist.

*Adem Yavuz Arslan is a journalist with over two decades of experience in political reporting, investigative journalism and international conflict coverage. His work has focused on Turkey’s political landscape, including detailed reporting on the 2016 coup attempt and its aftermath, as well as broader issues related to media freedom and human rights. He has reported from conflict zones such as Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq, and has conducted in-depth research on high-profile cases, including the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Arslan is the author of four books and has received journalism awards for his investigative work. Currently living in exile in Washington, D.C., he continues his journalism through digital media platforms, including his YouTube channel, Turkish Minute, TR724 and X.

**This line from George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four” captures the essence of totalitarian control: by rewriting history, those in power can shape public memory and define what is accepted as truth, thereby securing dominance over both present perception and future direction.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Turkish Minute.