ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the main steps in the process of the social construction of traumatic events that, in a given society, may incarnate the idea of evil, and in so doing contribute to reshaping its central value system by following Jeffrey Alexander's culturalist approach. It explores the bridging divided memories of traumatic events that play a major part in the ongoing process of reshaping the central value system of Turkish society and also in the making of a postsecular society. Postsecular sanctuaries emerge at the end of the social construction of a new master narrative, when a phase of ritualization is entered, but sometimes they occur at the beginning of the process, as the triggering element of a new re-configuration of a system of symbols. The chapter stresses how memory is crucial in the shaping and reshaping of a collective identities central value system, in the light of its present needs.
