As a graduate student in Cultural Studies at Sabancı University, Selin conducted an oral history interview with "Alp".
Selin:
“To be honest, it was a very different experience for me. I had never asked anybody for their life story before. It was surprising to see how many things there are to tell and how much is left unsaid! Oral history is like an ocean in which every sentence, every hesitation, every change in tone, everything that is forgotten or well remembered has meaning.”
From the Interview:
“The interesting thing is that mother and father are opposites when it comes to these issues. For example, my mother always voted for the Republican People’s Party. She is more leftist, while my father is more rightist. It was funny because my father used to defend the Justice and Development Party, saying to my mother, ‘you support RPP but if RPP comes to the power, they will jail religious people like us.’ In the end, the JDP came to power and threw my father in jail. It really is a tragicomic situation: the mentality my father defended landed him in prison.”
In this project, the interviewee preferred to remain anonymous.