I was seven or eight years old. We were walking in Taksim [a neighborhood in Istanbul] with a close friend of my parents I called "aunt." Accompanying us was an acquaintance of my aunt. There had been some kind of talk about where we were from. "We are from Salonica," I declared with confidence. In my eyes, being from Salonica was no different than being from Istanbul. When we came home, my aunt pulled me aside. She said, "From now on, you will never say 'I am from Salonica' to someone you don't know. This is very demeaning, people will look down upon you." I started to cry, protesting, "Why?" All kinds of evil words came rushing to my child's mind. Were they thieves? Were they immoral? Why should we be ashamed?

A columnist in a Turkish newspaper recently asked, “Will nothing really be the same again?”3 referring to the impact of the massive earthquake of 17 August 1999 on the Turkish psyche. The writer Murathan Mungan used a similar metaphor earlier in what seems today like a prophetic statement: “I think Turkey has really come to lean against the wall. There is nowhere to go; either the wall will crumble or it will be dismantled. If it crumbles, we will be crushed below, if it is dismantled maybe we will move to another space—or at least try to.”4

Résumé Cet article propose une analyse de la construction de la jeunesse dans le discours public en Turquie, depuis l’établissement de la République turque. Pendant la période 19231950, la jeunesse devient le symbole du nouvel Etat turc. Entre 1950 et 1980, par contre, le discours public reconstruit l’image des jeunes, les représentant comme des rebelles. Malgré ce changement dans leur représentation, les jeunes des deux périodes qui ont suivi des études se situent en grande partie dans la transformation de la société par le haut. Après 1980, il existe un nouveau départ dans la construction moderniste de la jeunesse, comme dans la culture politique turque en général. La situation en Turquie suggère que les études-recherches sur la jeunesse dans les sociétés modernistes non occidentales peuvent bénéficier d’une approche concevant les jeunes dans un contexte plus large, associant les questions d’âge, de cycle vital et de génération.

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