Aftermath of the 1971 coup

The aftermath of the 1971 coup is one part of the political time surrounding Kemal’s story: it reaches into the lives of his social circle, while later coups and street violence intrude on the private routines he tries to preserve. The novel sets the period’s political shocks against repeated domestic scenes, measuring history not only by public events but by the hours spent at a family supper table.

The 1971 Coup’s Personal Aftermath

In retrospect, Kemal distinguishes the small number of friends who became seriously involved in politics from the larger circle of young, wealthy people whose end-of-summer parties had once seemed anarchic. One of the politically committed friends was tortured by police in the aftermath of the 1971 coup and remained in prison until the 1974 amnesty. The fate of this unnamed friend marks a sharp contrast with the partygoers’ earlier belief that their youthful destruction of household objects carried political meaning. The circle’s later dispersal also registers the divide: two politically serious members cooled toward their former companions and lost touch.

This episode gives the coup’s aftermath a personal scale rather than a comprehensive historical account. Political repression appears through the fate of an acquaintance and the gradual separation of a social group; the narrative does not claim that every member of the circle shared his experience or politics.

Private Time in Çukurcuma

A later, more extended measure of time begins with Kemal’s visits to Füsun and her family. From his first supper there on October 23, 1976, to his last on August 26, 1984, seven years and ten months elapsed: 2,864 days. His notes record 1,593 suppers across 409 weeks, an average of roughly four visits a week. The frequency varied, but he never went more than ten days without seeing Füsun. The family came to expect him and kept a place for him at the table, while he worried that either his presence or his absence might cause offense.

The household’s routines make this duration legible. A German-made wooden wall clock with a glass case, pendulum, and chime represented the continuity of the outside world, although television had largely displaced clocks and radio as the household’s practical timekeeper. Each evening, the clock displayed on television before the news gave Füsun and Tarık Bey a reference against which to check their watches. Füsun’s careful adjustment of her wristwatch became a small, repeated exchange with Kemal: she knew he watched, and smiled when she had set it correctly.

Television also set the length of Kemal’s evenings. He usually arrived around seven and stayed until the nightly closing ceremony, shortly before midnight; by his estimate, an average visit lasted five hours. In his memory, the people and ordinary movements of the room could eclipse the screen: Füsun passed between the kitchen and dining area carrying plates and pots, while her parents followed programs and news. The evening’s recurring pattern offered a private rhythm, but it did not remove the family from the country’s public time.

Political Violence and Interrupted Routine

The news was the chief interruption to the peace Kemal associated with watching television at the Keskin home. By 1978, bombs were going off at night even in the neighborhood. Factions controlled streets leading toward Tophane and Karaköy, while armed confrontations also broke out around Çukurcuma, Cihangir, coffeehouses, and squares. Çetin, who drove Kemal to and from the house, sometimes found himself caught in crossfire and had to judge where it was safe to park or wait. He refused Kemal’s suggestion that he make the journey alone.

The 1980 military coup imposed martial law and a ten o’clock curfew. Kemal therefore had to leave at a quarter to ten, before he felt ready to end the visit. As Çetin drove through streets emptying in the dark, the curtailed time with Füsun became a personal deprivation nested inside a national restriction. The contrast is central to the period’s portrayal: the household’s familiar evening continued, but public authority could abruptly determine when Kemal had to return home.

Memory and Historical Scale

Kemal recalls political violence as a force ordinary residents tried to avoid rather than control, while the years of dinners acquire precision through dates, visit counts, clocks, broadcasts, and the nightly journey home. These different measures do not merge into one account of history. Instead, the political period is encountered at the point where it enters daily life: through a friend’s imprisonment, alarming news, dangerous streets, and a curfew that cuts short a visit.

The narrative later returns to the shared cultural materials of the period. In early 1992, while seeking posters, lobby photographs, and ticket stubs from films seen in the summer of 1976 for the Museum of Innocence, Kemal encountered collectors who felt embarrassed by their collections. This later act of gathering does not erase the intervening political history; it shows how he revisits the past through its surviving objects, preserving fragments of a time whose private rituals and public upheavals had occupied the same years.