Remembering in-between: Memory,exile,and belonging within liminal realms

Introduction

The Turkish diaspora in Germany is multilayered, enduring, and diverse, shaped by a long history of migration and exile that reflects Turkey’s complex economic and political landscape, past and present. Following the September 12th, 1980 military coup, ¹ which marked a traumatic loss for the left and the end of the Long Sixties in Turkey, tens of thousands were arrested, tortured, and some were executed or disappeared, while others fled and were stripped of their citizenship. ² While individuals fleeing persecution dispersed globally, many sought refuge in Germany, which had already become a significant destination for workers from Turkey since 1961. According to the UNHCR (2001: 7), 57,913 people applied for asylum in Germany in 1980, followed by 6302 in 1981. Despite continuous migration between Turkey and Germany, the Long Sixties political exiles—Turkey’s only exile generation in Germany shaped by socialist ideology and strong organizational ties—remain largely understudied compared to guest workers, and recent migrants and exiles from New Turkey. It is against this backdrop that I explore the liminality of exile, memory, home, and belonging through life story interviews with some of these exiles.

The exiled individuals discussed here, born in the late 1940s and 1950s, are the activist leftist members of the Long Sixties generation of Turkey, shaped by utopia and conflict, and involved in legal and illegal leftist organizations. Back then, the interviewees were mostly university students from middle-class, working-class, and rural/peasant backgrounds, alongside a smaller number of blue-collar workers. Yet within the broader exiled community there were also journalists, artists, unionists, civil servants, and others. The leftist movement, once powerful even in rural areas, was severely oppressed after the 1980 coup d’état, meaning torture, humiliation, persecution and imprisonment, beyond reminding the left of a deep loss. Above all, for those who fled Turkey, it marked the beginning of a long exile “compelling to think about but terrible to experience” (Said, 2003: 173), which has resulted in ambivalent feelings toward their past and origin settings. Now German citizens, these exiles embody the legacy of political repression and forced migration from Turkey during that critical historical moment. Drawing on their life story narratives, I approach exile through the concept of liminality—a transitional middle phase of rites of passage—that denotes a temporary yet transformative experience leaving a lasting imprint on memory. I, thus, explore this ever-shifting threshold between temporal and spatial zones—marked by ambiguity, reflection, and transformation—where liminal memory emerges as an interpretive and relational act of remembering, constituted in relation to both pre- and post-exile periods.

Exile’s liminality forms a chronotopic zone that is contradictive, conflictive and ambivalent producing plural and complex meanings and senses, oscillating between “uprooting and re-grounding” (Ahmad, 2003). Hence, rather than seeing exile as a realm of pure negativity or positivity, I explore its complexity, echoing Turner’s (1967: 97) description of liminality as “a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise,” acknowledging that any possibility could lead to both ways. In this sense, liminality of exile is complex, dialectical, transformative and formative, leaving a lasting imprint on both individual and collective memories. Exile could be “suffering in banishment” but also a “springing forth into a new life” (Brooke-Rose, 1998: 9) as reflected in the Turkish word sürgün, meaning both expulsion and sprouting. Drawing on the literature on exile, migration, diaspora, and memory studies, and employing participant observation and life story interviews, I examine how the life course of these exiles unfolds in relation to structure and anti-structure (liminality), as their narratives fracture and pluralize the meanings of home and belonging. I base my study on 15 life story interviews (lasting about 2.5 hours) with political exiles, conducted primarily in Frankfurt am Main and neighboring cities in Hesse, Germany in 2022–2023. The interviewees, ³ including five women and seven men, were reached through the snowball method after I contacted a key informant via a member of the Long Sixties generation living in Turkey. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using hermeneutic analysis (Rabinow and Sullivan, 1987), which positions understanding within social and historical contexts and acknowledges that interpretation is not unbiased but rather framed by the researcher’s own horizon of understanding (Gadamer, 2004).

Given my background as a researcher from Turkey who has lived in Germany for some time, I am, for these exiles, an insider through shared language and cultural references, yet an outsider, as part of a different generation shaped by another political context. I often find myself in a liminal position too, oscillating between positive and negative feelings as I wander through transnational zones, experiencing uncertainty and insecurity both here and there, but also enjoying being in-between and drawing meaning from this ambivalence. I, therefore, should note that my interpretation is shaped by my own position, which influences how I read the entanglements of expatriation, memory, and liminality. Finally, for these exiles, the impossibility of return has long been a defining feature, making their experience distinct from that of migrants despite some inevitable resemblances. While two of them still cannot enter Turkey, others can thanks to their German citizenship and resolved legal issues. Even so, they may be kept waiting for a while at customs by the police and subjected to unusual questioning, making them feel insecure, fearing any surprises. Thus, rising anti-immigrant discourses in German politics in addition to past political commitments and the authoritarian climate in Turkey prevent them from achieving a hybrid belonging, which can be defined as a state of resolved, blended attachments between here and there, forming a “third space” (Bhabha, 1994).

Displacement, liminality, and memory

The meaning of exile and diaspora have significantly broadened over the course of the 20th century. Initially, these terms primarily denoted the dispersal of historical communities such as the Jews, Greeks, Palestinians and Armenians. However, these two concepts now embrace a wide array of experiences, and the essence of being in exile resonates with all who find themselves displaced (Brah, 2005; Clifford, 1994). This situation, at the same time, points to a shift away from Said’s (2003: 184) conceptualizing of exile as a state whereby “you are born into it, or it happens to you” rather than a choice. Although it is incomparable to experience of being banished from one’s familiar home, exile in its voluntary forms increasingly appears as a defining symptom of our age, as countries drift further away from democratic principles. Relying on Bauman (1988: 39), one could also argue that exile or being displaced, once regarded as a unique condition, is no longer unique in a postmodern world where the sense of being “at home” has become precarious for everyone, so that, as he suggests, “if everyone is a stranger, no one is.” Another point to consider is that digital technologies are redefining distance by allowing exiles and refugees to stay in touch with places and people they left behind, which was not possible prior to the 2000s.

Returning to the diaspora of Turkey in Germany, its composition reflects a heterogeneous mix of economic migrants, political and self-imposed exiles who have arrived at varying points in time. While the exiles this article focuses on are the largest group of exiles to flee Turkey, after the 1980 military coup, the dismissed academics, students, journalists and artists, or in other words, the new exiles of the “New Turkey,” constitute a new group of exiles in Germany (Akyüz et al., 2024; Öztürk and Baser, 2023). Therefore, in line with Avtar Brah’s definition, Turkey’s diaspora in Germany can be seen as engaging with various identities and experiences associated with terms such as “migrant,” “immigrant,” “expatriate,” “refugee,” “guest worker,” and “exile.” This interaction takes place within “an interpretive frame referencing the economic, political, and cultural dimensions of these contemporary forms of migrancy” (Brah, 2005: 183).

Exile is often considered as evoking feelings of displacement, nostalgia and melancholy, complicating feelings of homeland and belonging. It signifies a stark temporal and spatial divide, marked by dispersion and rupture. Living in exile is often described as existing in a constant emotional and mental journey across places and times, marking in-betweenness that results from separation from one’s familiar chronotopic context. In this sense, Schuback (2017: 176–177) defines exile as a “condition of post-existence,” drawing on Gerard Richter’s concept of Nachheit—“afterness” that also implies “nearness”—to capture the paradox of living always in the aftermath while remaining close to what has been left behind. When all features of the experience of exile are considered together, it emerges as epitome of liminality—from the Latin word for “threshold”—a concept rooted in the anthropological work of Arnold van Gennep (2019 [1909]) and Victor Turner (1977a, 1977b, 1979). It refers to a mid-transitional phase of rites of passage that structure major life transitions—marked by ambiguity as a result of lived experiences of status changes through rituals, sudden events, or periods, preceded by separation (pre-liminal), where individuals leave their previous contexts and followed by incorporation (post-liminal), where they reintegrate into society with new roles (van Gennep, 2019 [1909]: 11). Van Gennep’s work was further developed by Victor Turner (1997b), who particularly focused on liminality that he famously describe as a state betwixt and between positions governed by law, custom, convention and ceremony, where individuals are neither entirely “this-nor-that, here-nor-there, one-thing-nor-the-other” (p.37). Turner suggests that traditional rules break down during liminality, requiring new frameworks, and emphasizes its roots in societal structures while manifesting as a personal journey shaped by shifting group dynamics.

Since Turner, liminality has become a powerful analytical tool for understanding diverse experiences, sharing important features across numerous scholarly fields, especially since the postmodern shifts of the 1980s (Thomassen, 2016: 1). In this regard, liminality has proven to be a powerful analytical tool for understanding experiences of refugeehood, exile, migration and diaspora, among other social phenomena (Boer, 2015; Malkki, 1995; Szakolczai, 2016; Thomassen, 2016; Tsoni, 2016). Indeed, rites of passage symbolize a shift from one fixed social state to a new normal, after a transitionary liminal realm eventually leading to reintegration and freedom from uncertainty. Yet, this process may not be moving as a linear progression, especially in forced or voluntary migration settings. Here, rather than framing liminality in terms of positivity or negativity, I attempt to show liminality’s fundamentally ambivalent character, carrying contradictory potentials that shift with individuals, contexts, and power relations: it can be simultaneously disempowering and enabling, produce belonging and detachment at once, and be marked by exclusion as well as by creativity and resilience (Marotta, 2025; Turner, 1977a). More to the point, agreeing with Vince Marotta, I apply it as a “structural liminality,” highlighting how migrants, refugees and exiles negotiate, reinforce, and contest host and origin structures, “moving in and out of liminality” rather than remaining fixed within it (Marotta, 2025: 14). Such a reading is crucial, because a static understanding of liminality contradicts the theoretical implications of the concept, reducing it to a closed non-transformative realm between life-worlds. It also “not only reinforces perceptions of migrants as people ‘out of time’ with others but also rests on the assumption that the ‘normal’ life of citizens is secure and stable” (Jacobsen and Karlsen, 2021: 5). Marotta, instead, turning back to the original conceptualizing of van Gennep and Turner, emphasizes liminality as fundamentally relational and dialectical, oscillating between structure and anti-structure.

This relational and dialectical understanding of liminality can be seen in the lived experiences of exiles in this study, where their exilic condition—like liminality—emerges not as a static state but as a process with changing conditions and redefining frameworks. This process is visible in their life trajectories: their liminal journeys began as asylum seekers in Germany, followed by years under refugee status, during which they learned German, pursued higher education or vocational training, and struggled to rebuild their lives. Obtaining German citizenship marked one threshold of moving beyond liminality, while for some visiting Turkey after many years constituted another. Yet feelings of uncertainty and insecurity persist in both contexts. Shifts in the political climate in Germany, racist attacks in the 1990s and early 2000s and hostile attitudes toward migrants—exemplified today by the rise of the far-right, anti-immigrant ideologies—or Turkey’s unstable political state, causing the idea of return to resurface at times and fade at others, push exiles into a continual moving in and out of liminality. The progression of age and transitions into new life stages also generate fresh liminal spaces and uncertainties.

Such a journey throughout a life course underscores the non-linear and moving nature of liminality, which Marotta further develops by re-engaging with Clay H. Trumbull’s concept of postliminium—from which van Gennep took the idea of threshold—to challenge linear understandings of rites of passage. As a non-linear interpretation, postliminium suggests that migrant and refugees’ journeys often “loop back” to pre-liminal identities and cultural practices, showing how they not only move physically but also revisit and rework past meanings of home while navigating between past, present, and future (Marotta, 2025: 15). In this process, memory operates as the key principle, interrelating past, present, and future, and thereby transforming liminal experience into a dynamic and relational memory from the very first moment. As Thomassen and Forlenza (2020: 83) put it, other than having “a decisive role in this space and time of indetermination,” memory “is itself formed by [liminality].” Thus, liminal experience becomes liminal memory by leaving a constitutive and enduring imprint on memory and affect. In other words, “at both the individual and social levels, memory elaborates and steers liminal experiences” and “helps individuals and communities search for new equilibrium by reflecting on past events, either fostering resilience or exacerbating crisis”(Thomassen and Forlenza, 2020: 74). This can be seen in the experiences of political exiles in this study, whose memories of activism and utopian dreams function simultaneously as sources of resilience and melancholia, as well as of belonging and alienation. Being in a liminal realm of exile crystallizes the past, while also actively shaping new meanings in a way attributing agency to memory itself (Thomassen and Forlenza, 2020: 86).

On the other hand, memory, as conceptualized within memory studies, performs in a liminal space which is shaped by dynamism between remembering, forgetting and transformation (Radstone, 2000: 12), operating within the in-between relationships of individuality and collectivity, culture and history, reality and imagination, and internal and external aspects of human experience (Mueller-Greene, 2022; Radstone, 2000). As memories “travel” (Erll, 2011), crossing physical and metaphorical boundaries, they carry traces of past experiences into new contexts, embodying the essence of liminality. Moreover, the constant fluidity of memory reflects how experiences of past events, which are liminal in nature and suspend normality for a time, become collective and cultural memories within different spaces and times. Liminal memory allows individuals and groups to continually reconstruct their identities and perceptions, adapting to shifting realities, aligning with Turner’s (1967: 105) description of liminality as “a stage of reflection.” Memory, thus, becomes an active process of negotiation— not just a reflection of the past, but a dialogue with the present and an imagination of possible futures. This ongoing interplay, reflected in the concept of liminality, underscores the interconnectedness of personal and collective narratives and highlights how liminal experiences foreground agency and the plurality of human responses (Thomassen, 2009: 5), demonstrating the inextricable link between memory, movement, and transformation. Furthermore, a liminal perspective on memory offers an understanding of memory as a process that resists static definitions, embracing ambiguity, transformation, and complexity, a theoretically grounded framework rooted in lived experience (Thomassen and Forlenza, 2020).

Fragments of memory in the condition of exile

The experience of exile manifests itself as a spatiotemporal experience. The state of being thrown out of familiar time and space marks the liminal state after separation, clarifying the past with nostalgic and melancholic imagery. In a circular flow of past, present, and future woven together, temporal experience in exile can become fragmented and disjointed, with “one’s life story [based] around a pivotal event of departure and a present condition of absence from one’s native land” (Barbour, 2007: 293). Hence, the exile’s memory emerges as a narrative in which the past permeates and even dominates the present, a narrative that is repeatedly crystallized through reinterpretations over time. Like exile, the exile memory is in the “limbo between [its] past and present modes of daily existence” (Turner, 1979: 467). Precisely for this reason, the common feature in the life story of each person I interviewed is their fragmented temporality. Their narratives enthusiastically recount their lives in Turkey but abruptly fade when describing their exile in Germany, indicating a rupture caused by the 1980 military coup. This event marks the climax of their stories, and the subsequent exile narratives lack coherence and are filled with gaps, somewhat like starting a new book rather than a new chapter. They talk about their life in Germany only when asked and offer fragmented narratives about it— a fragmentality also noted by Karacan (2015: 156). It is also noteworthy that when describing their lives in Germany, they begin to intersperse German words into their Turkish narratives. Such a cognitive blending does not happen while describing their experiences in Turkey. This linguistic fusion embodies the coexistence and complex relationship of multiple languages inherent in the transnational experience, placing them within the liminal space of the diaspora. Misztal (2010: 90–91) notes that such shifts in how people view their circumstances are mirrored in personal memories, which are shaped by the broader cultural and social context.

Their life stories reveal that the experience of exile has created a clear distinction between two different phases of their past lives. In one past, they find a sense of belonging and identity, while in the other, even after all these years, they feel somewhat detached, if not uncomfortable. Their narratives wander in a liminal space, constantly comparing these different phases in a dialectical and relational way. This situation, as Turner notes, serves as “a stage for reflection”, looking back to their life while searching their memories. Migration with all its derivations opens a reflexive space where emotions and memories are given new meanings through new experiences and encounters, remembering and forgetting and through comparison. In forced displacements, this inevitably happens in a sharper manner, especially when a return is not possible even for a short visit. Ultimately, a history of one’s own life answers the very question of who one is, as our memories shape and give meaning to our experiences and are inherently intertwined with identity (Lambek and Antze, 1996: xii). Therefore, the meaning of memories here is closely linked to the exile experience, which we cannot understand unless considering “their chronotopic frames” (Lambek and Antze, 1996). In Bakhtinian understanding, these frames situate narratives within “a field of historical, biographical, and social relations” (Morson and Emerson, 1990: 371), linking the personal to broader temporal and spatial dynamics.

This chronotropic framework also suggests that the exile years lack the vibrancy and youthfulness inherent in an exhilarating and heroic narrative of revolutionary times, which would echo my interviewees’ experiences as the political members of the Long Sixties generation of Turkey. The exile may not only involve the loss of a familiar environment but also the loss of symbolic capital, as Karacan (2019) notes, tied to one’s former affiliations. The loss of educational and professional credentials as well as roles as influential leaders or activists in the past undermines symbolic capital, which, as Bourdieu (1984) explains, is based on honor, prestige, recognition and legitimation. Moreover, their experiences in Germany highlight a fresh struggle, lacking the familiar community and even the authority they once knew, making the strategies and tactics of everyday life obsolete (de Certeau, 1984). Despite eventually coming together through a series of associations, and engaging in various activities in Germany and Europe, the dynamics are different from their previous experiences. Orhan (M, 1948), one of the interviewees, exemplifies this shift, stating:

After some time, we started to raise our voices for the problems of migrants and workers in Germany. But to tell you the truth, it was never the same. Although I still consider myself a socialist and revolutionist, there is no trace of revolutionary dreams left now. The world has changed.

The change Orhan refers to not only reflects the chronotopic framework of exile but also shifts in the Zeitgeist in a broader sense. In Turkey, the 1980 military coup marginalized leftist movements, turning the socialist activism and utopian aspirations of the Long Sixties into a distant, almost mythic past. Following the coup, many from that generation went either to prison or into exile, hoping to regroup and rebuild their strength with the intention of eventually returning and regrouping. However, as time passed, either the possibility of return became unattainable, or when the chance did arise, many no longer wished to go back, whether due to lingering insecurity or because they had established a life in Germany. For some, like an interviewee who as a newlywed lost her husband to torture, there was nothing left to return to. Moreover, they bore witness to the waning influence of socialism in both rhetoric and practice, a decline catalyzed by the fall of the Berlin Wall as “a momentum that closes an epoch and opens a new one” (Traverso, 2016: 2), and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which for “people on the left —a multitude of currents including many anti-Stalinist tendencies—felt uncanny” (Traverso, 2016) after a short period of expectation of democratic socialism. Put differently, they “became ‘spiritually roofless’” (Traverso, 2016: xiv). Unlike Orhan, a few of my interlocutors speak, in a romanticized way, of one day carrying out that revolution. Yet, for the most part, they carry a deep conviction that the revolutionary utopia they once dreamed of is no longer a near possibility, leaving them as melancholic figures. This does not mean, however, that they are miserable; on the contrary, they continue to struggle and protest for a more just world. Nevertheless, this melancholy blends the sorrow of lost leftist ideals with the memory of displacement—a dual loss of both an imagined future and a tangible sense of belonging. For a political exile, this is a deeper wound.

Beyond heimat and memleket: understanding home and belonging in liminality

The liminal state of exile profoundly affects the sense of belonging and home, generally understood as rooted in a familiar past and place. These two concepts, which are used interchangeably in this article, are deeply interrelated. As Yuval-Davis (2011: 10) mentions, “belonging is about an emotional (or even ontological) attachment, about feeling ‘at home.’” Belonging is both politically and culturally contested, increasing transnational mobility of individuals making belonging even more complex. Studies on home and belonging, while considering globalization and mobility, tend to think that these two attachments are still rooted in particular places (Savage et al., 2005; Yuval-Davis, 2011). Yet, instead of framing “here” and “there” as oppositional, I argue for an understanding that embraces the liminal journey of home and belonging, emphasizing their multiple meanings and fluidity. This perspective opens a more flexible, cross-border, and dynamic view, where the sense of home and belonging are not fixed, but continually contested and negotiated over time (Ahmed et al., 2003). As Kabachnik et al. (2010: 317) point out, “home is multidimensional, a concept in which temporality (past, present, future) intersects with spatiality (physical and imaginary) and social relations (family, oppression, domination).” Likewise, in memory studies, against the previous understanding of memory’s rootedness in a specific place, memory has been increasingly regarded as “a fluid and flexible affair” (Bond et al., 2016: 1). The increasing mobility of individuals and groups, along with the growing significance of their stories, cultures, and practices, has become one of the central focuses in memory research (Creet and Kitzmann, 2014; Palmberger and Tošić, 2016; Passerini et al., 2020).

The idea of home, for the participants of this study, appears as a place of origin but not always a point of destination, given that they are now somehow settled in Germany as well. Like many forcibly displaced people, they lost their homes and became Haymatlos, and the meaning of home continues to evolve between various wandering thoughts. It is constantly reshaped between temporal, spatial and social relations, between remembering and forgetting, reflecting the ambivalent liminal state of a displaced person’s sense of home and belonging. As in the case of those exiled from Turkey, individuals who have once experienced displacement seem to always move in and out of liminality, even if they are now citizens of Germany and have spent most of their lives there. This also leads to a fluid sense of identity, memory, and belonging that moves in-between the homeland and place of residence.

An expression frequently mentioned by many of the interviewees, and an issue of previous community discussions, provides an interesting lens through which to understand issues of home and belonging. The expression “our feet were here but our heads were there,” often recalled when reflecting on the early years of exile, encapsulates their sense of in-betweenness and unwavering commitment to the political struggles in Turkey. It vividly captures the early stages of their liminal states, navigating between their current place of residence and their longing for their abandoned homeland. During the 1980s in Germany, this group of exiles organized protests, hunger strikes, and occupations to highlight gross human rights violations faced by their comrades in Turkey after the 1980 coup d’état. In this sense, as already demonstrated by many in different contexts of exile (see, for example, Brice, 2020; Vasanthakumar, 2021), they took on the role of raising the transnational voice of exile focused on the politics of the homeland, a responsibility they felt obliged to fulfill. However, toward the end of the eighties, international public interest in the events unfolding in Turkey began to fade. Simultaneously, Turkey’s human rights situation started to improve, albeit superficially, due to its aspirations to join the European Union. During this period, some political prisoners were released, and the general amnesty of 1991 further accelerated this process. This amnesty also allowed some exiles to return to their homeland. Yet, many others whose cases were still pending or who no longer felt safe in Turkey, chose to stay in Germany.

Conclusion

The liminal experiences and memories of these individuals may sound overly melancholic at first glance. Yet, as a concluding note, it is crucial to emphasize another dimension of exile: sprouting into a new life with ups and downs. Despite their suffering, they hold a distinct hope that is unique to this generation of Turkey. When living “here” in Germany became inevitable, they have showed an unwavering determination to rebuild their communities, pursuing their generation’s utopia of a just and equal world. They founded associations centered on culture, anti-racism, and the rights of workers and migrants, collaborated with German left-wing groups, and maintained ties with political parties in Turkey. Their current liminal state can be summarized in the words of many of them: “Our feet are here, but now our minds are both in Turkey and Germany.” This situation demonstrates that the relationship established between the origin and host structures has acquired a contentious yet simultaneously relational and dialectical quality. Although full hybridization has not yet been achieved—which I believe could be accomplished by the second generation—the initial state of being “neither here nor there” has been replaced by a two-sided yet fragile orientation. Hence, their liminal experiences also encompass efforts to build a new life that transcends places, experiences, and time. It brings together the memories of pre- and post-exile in a conflictual relationship.

Inevitably, there is some nostalgia, yet not for a homeland anymore as it is deeply contested either here and there, but for their youth and utopia— a typical feature for distinctive generations. Furthermore, as I have attempted to address through their experiences, liminality offers analytical possibilities not only for understanding the experience of exile but also its memory-forming effect, as well as the complexity of feelings of home and belonging. The accounts of the interviewees reveal that they constantly frame their conditions while moving in and out of liminality, balancing their past attachments to adapt to changing realities and transforming memory into an active process of negotiation. Exile’s liminal memory, therefore, becomes more than a reflection of the past; it functions as an ongoing dialogue with the present’s liminal realities and the new possibilities that exile may bring. This interplay reveals the deep connection between memory, agency, and transformation, emphasizing the plurality of human responses within personal and collective narratives.