Cemile Sahin
Rifle in the Closet
In "Rifle in the Closet", Cemile Sahin addresses the historical development of Western societies’ militarization, with Switzerland as a case study. The title refers to the standard practice of Swiss soldiers taking home their service weapons after military training and storing it in the closet for emergencies. As a result, Switzerland is the country with the highest density of privately stored weapons in Europe.
The starting point of Sahin‘s research were two treaties signed a hundred years ago, which divided upthe territories of the Ottoman Empire after World War I: the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), in which, among other things, the current national borders of Turkey were defined. In 2023,as the Treaty of Lausanne celebrates its centenary, the consequences of this arbitrary border demarcation are still felt in the region today.
