In other words, "the acquisition and transmission of imaginations of the past follows patterns that are specific to the respective generation." (Welzer, 2010, p.5) This is exemplified by the experience of the Sabbateans during the transition of Turkey into a modern nation after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1920. Traditionally the Sabbateans had followed their religious beliefs in private while maintaining a Moslem facade in public. But after the fall of the Ottomans, and the modernization programs enacted by its new leader Mustafa Kemal, there was enormous social pressure for the Sabbateans to conform to the new ideals of the modern Turkish state by discarding their Sabbatean religious traditions. In other words, the Turks were creating a new social memory that was based on abandoning traditional activities, like practicing Sabbateanism, and embracing the new, progressive activities of the modern Turkish state: exemplified by citizenship. But this new social memory required many to abandon their religious faith in favor of a modern connection to the state. And this new ideology was accepted by many Sabbateans for decades. However, a new generation, raised in a more democratic society, has rejected this social memory in favor of a more individualistic view of the past. Individuals in modern-day Turkey are rejecting the social memory which maintains a sense of conformity as a basis of citizenship, and are openly...

But while social memory is defined as more of a means of communication than actual memory, this communication can be used for a variety of purposes from maintain an oppressive state, to becoming the basis for a new cultural identity. And over time social memory can be transformed by new generations to embrace new, or even traditional, concepts.
References

Allan, Diana (2007). "Chapter 10: The Politics of Witness: Remembering and Forgetting 1948 in Shatila Camp," in Nakba: Palestine, 2948, and the Claims of Memory. Eds. Ahmad E. Sa'di and Lila Abu-Lughod.

New York: Columbia UP: 254-282. Print.

Cenarro, Angelo. (2002). "Memory Beyond the Public Sphere: The Francoist

Repression Remembered in Aragon." History and Memory 14(1/2): 165-176

Neyzi, Leyla. (2002). "Remembering to Forget: Sabbateanism, National Identity,

and Subjetivity in Turkey." Society for Comparative Study of Society and History: 137-158. Print.

Welzer, Harald. (2010). "Re-narrations: How Pasts Change in Conversational

Remembering." Memory Studies 3(1): 5-17.…