Tracing Lineage and Intergenerational Memory in the Western Balkans: Collective Memory, Family Narratives, and Cultural Identity in Bağ-lar Periodical

The transmission of genealogical roots, family histories, and intergenerational memory plays an important role in maintaining cultural identities across generations. In the Western Balkans, a region shaped by displacement, political change, shifting borders, conflicts, and rich cultural diversity, preserving collective and familial memory is a critical dimension of heritage, lineage, and social identity. This study investigates how collective memory, cultural identity, place-based belonging, and family/intergenerational narratives are articulated in literary works, with particular attention to how these narratives connect Turkish communities in the Western Balkans with their ancestral past. To this end, the study focuses on the Bağ-lar periodical, published by the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB) and featuring contributions from authors across the Western Balkans. The study analyzed 123 short stories published in the first 13 issues of Bağ-lar using a qualitative document-based case study design and Miles and Huberman’s interactive model of qualitative analysis. The analysis resulted in 532 coding instances organized into eight overarching themes. The findings show that these stories represent memories of the past through family histories, ancestral narratives, memories of place, migration experiences, language, religious and spiritual traditions, and everyday cultural practices. The stories also show how people remember, reinterpret, and pass on connections to family history and cultural heritage across generations. In this respect, Bağ-lar provides a literary space where collective memory, cultural identity, and family histories come together through narratives from Turkish communities in the Western Balkans. Overall, the study highlights the role of literary narratives in representing genealogical continuity across generations.