Download PDF | Emre Erol - The Ottoman Crisis in Western Anatolia_ Turkey’s Belle Époque and the Transition to a Modern Nation State-I.B.Tauris (2016).
336 Pages
Emre Erol is Lecturer at Leiden University. An expert on the Eastern Mediterranean and early twentieth-century Turkey, his research interests lie in the personal histories of the Young Turks, migration, nationalisms, porttowns and port-cities and the effects of capitalism. He has published articles and book chapters on the history of forced migration in Western Anatolia before World War I and has published on contemporary developments in Turkey in both English and Turkish. He completed his PhD at Leiden University and his MA and undergraduate studies at Sabanci University.
‘Erol’s book is an exemplary study of the major developments of the period (imperialism, economic incorporation, nationalism and war) seen through the prism of a meticulous microhistory of an Ottoman port town.’
Erik J. Zürcher, Professor of Turkish Studies, Leiden University
‘A most welcome contribution to the field, this study explores the complexities behind the pogrom-like violence against the Greek-Orthodox inhabitants in an Aegean coastal town on the eve of World War I. The event is rightly viewed in the context of the transition from empire to nation state. On the basis of an impressive amount of source material, Emre Erol has succeeded in providing a fresh insight into the manifold dynamics that affected and shaped socio-political life during the Young Turk era.’
Fikret Adanır, Professor Emeritus of History, Sabancı University
‘Late Ottoman history has become a minefield of controversy and distortion. Yet scholars like Emre Erol bring an enviable integrity to uncovering the dark spots of the declining empire. In an exemplary exploration of Young Turk policy and the fate of the Greeks of Western Anatolia, Erol peels away the layers of misinformation to find a tragic story of how reformers turned into the gravediggers of what they had hoped to preserve.’ Ronald Grigor Suny, author of “They Can Live in the Desert But Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my mentors, colleagues, friends, and family who have been with me throughout this journey. Their support was essential in the realization of this book.
The decision to write this book on the history of the county of Foçateyn owes much to my master's thesis supervisor Professor Fikret Adanir, who, like me, has personal connections with Eski Foça. My master's research on the history of Ottoman leftists introduced me to the workers of the Empire, and it was through them that I encountered the world of the eastern Mediterranean and its port cities and port towns. Throughout my journey, I became increasingly interested in the topic of port-town workers within the framework of labour history. Fikret Adanirs encouragement to go beyond the relationship of ports and workers and explore the local history of Eski Foga and Yeni Foga further stimulated my own interests, and I am very grateful to him for his support and inspiration.
I would like to also express my gratitude to my promoter Professor ErikJan Zürcher and my co-promoter Professor Jan Lucassen. Their caring guidance and helpful suggestions were essential in shaping the development of this book, which is based on my doctorate. Our meetings and discussions were not only very useful, but also constituted the most pleasant memories of my doctoral studies. Like most researchers, I encountered challenges during my time at Leiden University, and I must thank both of them for always encouraging me to take up new directions of research while helping me keep focus. The years of my doctorate research were truly a period of learning and development for me. I especially would like to thank to ErikJan Zürcher for providing me with opportunities to develop my research and teaching skills. His interest, constructive criticism, and expertise kept me on track and expanded my intellectual horizons.
In addition, I must thank the two institutions that supported my research and gave me the financial means to support myself. I was awarded a research fellowship at the International Institute of Social History (ISH) in Amsterdam during my first year of doctoral research (2009 — 10). I am grateful to the staff and my friends and colleagues there who helped me, especially during my early days in the Netherlands. After my fellowship at the IISH, I was employed at various schools and programs at Leiden University. I would like to thank all of my colleagues and staff members at Leiden who believed in my research and shared my passion for teaching and academics. I would especially like to thank the Leiden University Institute of Area Studies (LIAS) for the academic opportunities that it granted me.
My doctoral work and research at Leiden University would not have been as enjoyable without the company of Gaye Eksen, Eftychia Mylona, Dr Tsolin Nalbantian, and Dr Hans Theunissen. I owe them heartfelt thanks for all the hours that they listened to me, supported me, and cheered me up. What would research be without coffee, cookies, and good conversation?
I was lucky to have friends and colleagues who helped me in various ways throughout the research and writing of this book. I am indebted to Professor Ayhan Aktar, Professor Engin Berber, Gókhan Demirdag (then Municipal Governor of Foga), Dr Fuat Dündar, and the late Reha Midilli who were courteous enough to share their photographs, ideas, and relevant primary sources with me. I would like to also express my gratitude to Serhan Afacan, Sofia Bouduraki, Stelios Irakleous, Aykut Mustak, Eftychia Mylona and Mark David Wyers who helped me with languages and primary material.
My family, especially my sister Ece Erol, was always there to support and encourage me, and Ece always offered a helping hand whenever I needed extra books or archival materials from Turkey. My parents, Selcan and Necati, always followed my progress, fostered my interest, and gave me their full backing. I am indebted to them for all their care and support.
When I look back at this five-year journey, I see that despite various obstacles, I was always able to maintain my enthusiasm. I owe this first and foremost to my beloved Nihal who always supported me, believed in me, and cared for me. Our mutual love for anything Aegean shaped this work and will impassion my future projects. I dedicate this book to her for making my life beautiful in countless ways.
A NOTE ON PLACE NAMES
The names of places are generally used in the way that they are used today. Sometimes the old names and their alternatives are referred to avoid confusion. Alternative names are generally provided in brackets together with the contemporary ones or the other way around depending on the context. The use of one name or another (in Greek or in Ottoman Turkish, old or new) is context-bounded and does not indicate an implied priority.
INTRODUCTION
The Irony of the Black Stone of Foça
‘The Legend of the Black Stone’ (known as the 'Karatag Efsanesi' in Turkish) is a widely known folk tale about Foga. The residents of modern-day Eski Foça (Foça-i Atik, ‘Old Foça’)! speak of the tale, as do the many visitors who are charmed by the beauty of this Aegean harbour town. Almost every tourist information booklet starts with a reference to the legend, and some local writers have used it as a symbol in their poems. As a child I spent almost all of my summers in Eski Foga, the central town of today’s district of Foga, and I heard and read about the legend countless times. However, it was only in my late twenties that I recognized the irony of it all.
According to the legend, there is a small black stone on the streets of Eski Foga that is kicked from one place to another by the careless steps of the town's many visitors. Nobody sees the stone because they are so enraptured by the beauty surrounding them. But anyone who steps on it is stricken by a deep longing in their hearts: they fall in love with the charm of Eski Foga and wherever they go, a part of them is left wandering its streets and shores. Those who leave are haunted by a desire to go back, and those who stay forget about their original homelands and spend the rest of their lives there.
I know that feeling. Once I thought that I too had stepped on that small black stone when I was young. But in its depths, the feeling described in that local legend is actually homesickness and for me, that is the source of the irony of ‘The Legend of the Black Stone’. It is a stone that ‘haunts’ the hearts of those who step on it and makes them feel like ‘exiles’ longing for their true home. The irony is that Eski Foça had residents who once lived there and longed to return, as well as others who were ‘haunted’ by it but didn’t know why. The town’s real story, however, is filled with more ghosts than the legend.
Eski Foça, like many other places in Turkey, has been both the origin and final destination for many refugees who were forced to migrate. The history of the county of Foçateyn (the modern-day district of Foça) constitutes one of the many stages of a dramatic transition from empire to nation state. It is a home ‘longed for’ by the generations of its old Ottoman Greek residents who were forced to leave, first in the spring of 1914 and later in 1922, and it is also home to the ‘charmed’ Muslim refugees from the Balkans, the muhacirs, and the Muslims who were part of the population exchange after 1923, the miibadils who were resettled there after their flight and expulsion from their original homelands. All suffered as the result of nationalism and demographic engineering, but they ended up living under the varying guises of the spell of that ‘black stone’. Once they set foot in their new hometown, those Muslim refugees and the subjects of the population exchange ‘forgot about their original homelands and embraced Foça, while the Ottoman Greeks who were forced to leave always longed to return. One nationalism made people ‘forget’ and the other one made them ‘remember’, just like that legendary stone would do.
So maybe ‘The Legend of the Black Stone’ is an unconscious manifestation of an ‘untold’ story, a Freudian slip of sorts. After all, it is the modern-day residents of Foca who made up that legend and they are the descendants of people who settled there as muhacirs or miibadils. They grew up listening to their grandparents’ stories and some even remembered those days of turmoil. In Foça today, people live amidst the remains of the old Ottoman town, which are more or less intact, but they are largely amnesic about its history. In this way, "The Legend of the Black Stone' can be thought of as a literary expression narrated by people who feel but cannot fully comprehend all the things that have shaped the reality around them, as it offers a poetic explanation for a part of the past and present that is now lacking.
But let me say up front that this book does not aspire to test the validity of the above-mentioned claim. Rather, it is an attempt to understand and bring to light the various elements that played significant roles in the aforementioned process of the transition from empire to nation state on a local scale that resulted in the creation of exiles and the settling of other exiles in their place. My goal is to historicize this very real 'haunting' without partisanship or romanticization. In other words, this is an attempt to describe the history of the county of Fogateyn in its most troublesome years in the modern era and connect it to the rather global histories of the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey and, more generally, from the Age of Empires to the Age of Extremes. Beginning roughly in the 1820s, the county was shaped and reshaped by economic incorporation into global capitalism, state-sponsored modernization reforms, growth and migration. It’s boomtown Eski Foça was transformed into a populous cross-cultural space by the end of the nineteenth century. Small communities of Ottoman Armenians and Jews, as well as Europeans, lived together with larger groups of Ottoman Greeks and Muslims in the towns of the county. But in June 1914, the county was suddenly transformed into a homogenous community that consisted only of Turkish-speaking Muslims. Foçateyn thus entered a period of transition that essentially lasted until 1922 during a period of time when imperialisms, nationalisms and warfare were shaping the county.
Fogateyn experienced the simultaneous effects of a multitude of major transformative forces (such as capitalism, state reforms, wars and migration) that in other parts of the Empire were already having a profound impact. For that reason, the history of the county of Fogateyn is a concentrated reflection of the effects of the market economy, state endeavours, political ideologies, power struggles, war and migration. Of course, those forces also played important roles in other parts of the Ottoman Empire in the transition from empire to nation state, but it is rather uncommon to see them at play in the history of a single county, and that is what makes the real history behind “The Legend of the Black Stone’ so significant.
Enquiry of Research
In this study I attempted to discover the historical reasons behind the radical transformation of the county of Fogateyn from a developing, incorporated and cross-cultural entity at the end of the nineteenth century into a veritable ghost county that was depopulated, destroyed, isolated and demographically homogenized in the early decades of the twentieth century. The protagonists who started that transformation in 1914 were the Unionists” who controlled the Ottoman state at the time. But I should mention that during the course of my research, I found myself asking two questions, which on the surface may appear naive and simple but underpin a troublesome past: Why would a state want such a devastating change for a tax-yielding and developed county like Fogateyn? And, what does the history of Fogateyn tell us about the larger transitions that occurred in the context of the Ottoman demise?
The first question came about as the result of my criticism of the Orientalist interpretations of the Ottoman-Turkish history that sees ‘violence and backwardness’ as ‘Middle Eastern’ and ‘Muslim’ traits. The interests of the dominant social actors shaped the actions of the Ottoman state like all other states. And I should point out that by no means is my aim to legitimize the past. Rather, I sought to understand the relationship between state and society at a particular time in history in a particular geography. Of course, there are some ready answers to this question from a variety of disciplines. The effects of wars, modernity, capitalism, elite networks, nationalisms and geographical peculiarities have all been extensively studied. However, analyses of those effects are rarely employed in a singular study. Moreover, we rarely hear the ‘silenced histories’ of less global actors such as local power holders, workers and minorities. That is what first stoked my interest in the local history of Fogateyn, and from there I sought to discuss the transition from empire to nation state in a local historical context.
In this book, I put forward the claim that a reconstruction of the local history of a place where Greeks and Turks, in other words Orthodox Christians (or Ottoman Greeks) and (Turkish-speaking) Muslims, lived, worked and produced together can help test accepted nationalist grand narratives about the ‘unavoidable’ split between the two groups as it actually took place. Local history thus provides a meaningful platform for discussing the question of how the two groups in that locality drifted apart. Did external (or rather global) forces and actors determine what happened locally? Or is there a more complex picture in which nothing was unavoidable but both the global and the local were at play? My goal is to highlight the fact that asking why something happened should not be an attempt at justification but merely a means of better understanding the past.
My second line of inquiry focused on the potential of the history of Fogateyn to give us a fresh perspective for understanding the transition from empire to nation state in the Ottoman/Turkish context. And since this issue of transition has been extensively studied, we might assume that the history of Foçateyn will merely confirm what we already know. However, through my research into the history Fogateyn I realized that there were unique aspects to that transition, and my curiosity was rewarded with ample stories and sources that fill in the gaps in our understandings of the late Ottoman Empire. The history of Fogateyn reveals how and why the Ottoman demise after World War I in fact started with the Balkan Wars in 1912 and ended after 1922 with the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. This research opens up new perspectives because it doesn't take up the rise of nationalisms among the elite and inter-state power plays as the sole means of explaining the transition as one long chapter; that has already been successfully done. What this book does do, however, is highlight those events that are intricately linked to one another in succession and thus constitute a meaningful, drastic and rapid period of transition on a local level. The novelty of this approach lies in the depiction of the eventful nature of this phase of transition in a local history.
Seminal studies by Fikret Adanir, Mehmet Hacisalihoglu and Erik Jan Zürcher? have shown that the loss of the Ottoman Balkans, Ottoman Macedonia, or Rumeli (Roumelia) is crucial for understanding the Young Turks, and especially the Unionists, the majority of whom hailed from those regions. Those studies discuss the effects of the Macedonian Question and the loss of the Ottoman Balkans on the Ottoman political elite, the Young Turks who shaped the last years of the Ottoman Empire and the early years of the Republic of Turkey. This book takes a similar approach and applies it to the local level. The history of transition in Fogateyn, especially what I call the Spring of Organized Chaos“ that occurred in June 1914, reveals that the loss of the Ottoman Balkans was not only relevant at the level of elites but also pertinent in the eventful development of events in the Ottoman Empire as the result of nationalist rivalries, migrations and wars.
This research on the history of the transformation in Foçateyn employs two recent and fruitful trends in the historiography of the late Ottoman Empire: micro history and comparative macro models.’ I simultaneously reveal and discuss the equally important agencies of a variety of local and global actors. The local, in this case the history of Fogateyn and its residents, is emphasized in my research. While I do see a need to give a voice to the ‘silenced’ agents of history, I disagree with the dichotomy which states that ‘we the people’ are mere passive receivers of the policies of ‘they the statesmen’. Policies do find willing executioners or dissidents who bargain with global forces (historical actors of higher power) and contribute to the ways by which the final outcomes of policies are shaped. But this bargain between the global and local does not exist in a space of infinite possibilities. Choices are restricted and influenced by discourses, power relations and social structures. Established histories of discursive practices, power allocation and economic structures create patterns that limit and influence the possibilities available. Focusing on the local is a strong element of this research, but I also hope that this book will contribute to our understanding of universal human experiences and transformations. To that end, I employed macro models and world historical references in my interpretations. In doing so, my goal was to connect the story of the local to the story of the global. If am able to fulfil that goal, I would consider my success to be an antidote to forms of essentialism that limit us to regional, cultural and national boundaries, and in the process I hope to contribute to the normalization of Ottoman and the Middle Eastern histories.
Chapter Structure
First I attempt to define what was distinct about Fogateyn before the period of transition that started in the spring of 1914. In this way I aim to demonstrate the nature of the transition by providing a contrast with the previous state of affairs. In the first chapter, this brings to light the story of Eski Foga’s emergence as a boomtown, a time when markets acted as a global force at work in the development of the county. I demonstrate that Foçateyn was one of the Ottoman counties that became integrated into the world economy at an early date. Eski Foça, the centre of the county, emerged as a developing port town in the mid-nineteenth century. The history of the development of the salt business in the county and its effects on Eski Foga port provide much insight about the making of a globally connected economy and shows that the developments in Foçateyn were synchronized with those of incorporated port towns and port cities in the eastern Mediterranean.
In the second chapter I examine the second major global force, the state, which appears as the main actor in the history of Fogateyn. The amount of knowledge and control that was produced by Ottoman state reforms, including the infrastructure and the new legal framework that emerged after the reforms, appears as the driving force behind the incorporation. Ironically, the reforms that were implemented with the aim of increasing central control contributed to the process of incorporation and thus undermined its very purpose. The dichotomous nature of the process of Fogateyn's incorporation is demonstrated through the changes in demography and spatial transformations that occurred.
In the third chapter I investigate the meaning of Fogateyn's historical trajectory as regards its residents and the Ottoman centre. This involves a step outside discussions of larger transformative forces like the state and market and a subsequent focus on the local. Taking into account the drastic transformations that loomed on the horizon in June 1914, I employ a cautious narrative to avoid retrospective readings. In the nineteenth century, Fogateyn became a developing cross-cultural entity with a cosmopolitan outlook. Nationalisms existed in the background but coexistence and increasing interaction were the daily reality. Architectural forms representing middle-class values started to dominate, especially in Eski Foga. Many of Fogateyn’s old residents recalled this period as a belle époque, but this shouldn’t be construed as a cosmopolitan heaven, nor as a state of constant contention and conflict as its critiques would argue. Rather, it was a fragile habitat that was transformed by modernity. It had the potential to formulate coexistence as much as contention. The maintenance of this habitat was dependent on Fogateyn’s incorporation into world markets. There were no clear connections, however, with the transformation that started to take place in June 1914 and the way Fogateyn emerged as a developing entity. In other words, Fogateyn’s history of incorporation and state-sponsored modernization did not inevitably lead to its transformation in 1914. Previously there were no major or sustained inter-ethnic or inter-communal tensions, nor did the Ottoman centre unleash violence to restore its power (which was contested by international markets); rather, there was a fragile system of interdependence, development and cross-culturalism. At that point, I take up the pertinent question: Why did such a violent transformation take place?
In my fourth chapter, I propose a framework for understanding and discussing the nature of the changes that took place in the Ottoman political centre in 1913 when a peculiar brand of ideology and a certain network of young imperial bureaucrats took control of the Empire. I offer a discussion of the history of the re-empowerment of the Unionists after the Balkan Wars and argue that it was indeed the Balkan Wars, the experiences of the Unionists vis-a-vis the Macedonian Question, the peculiar form of nationalism that emerged around that time, and the new political and diplomatic realities that created a new Ottoman centre. This new centre of power, now radicalized Unionists, identified the very nature of the Ottoman coast, its cross-culturalism and its incorporated structure as problems that needed urgent attention.
In the fifth chapter I talk about the events of the spring of 1914, which I argue launched the transformation from an imperial county to a national one. This is a monographic attempt to reconstruct the events based on as many sources as possible. I initially present all available details concerning what I refer to as the Spring of Organized Chaos. Then I argue that the Unionists organized the ousting and flight of the Ottoman Greeks who lived in Fogateyn. Through this I hope to provide readers with a chance to make an assessment of the unfolding of events. The oustings were political in nature and they were reminiscent of the nationalist demographic policies of the era. The Spring of Organized Chaos in Foçateyn thus constitutes one of the earliest and most well-documented cases of the Unionist's demographic operations. This analysis sheds light on the foundations of the Unionists’ radical policies of demographic engineering and destruction which would occur later on. I also argue that June 1914 in Foçateyn presents a concrete historical case that links the dynamics of the Macedonian Question to the larger process of the formation of a nation state under Unionist rule.
The transformation of Foçateyn was only the first incident in an eightyear period of turmoil that left its mark on the history of che county as much as on the history of the Ottoman Empire. In the sixth chapter, the rest of this period of transformation is discussed. The spring of 1914 until the nominal end of the Greco-Turkish War in 1922 is taken up as a single period of extended warfare that witnessed increased destruction and the creation of more refugees with each incident of conflict, all of which built upon one another. Utilising a framework that encapsulates the entire period in a monolithic manner makes it possible to connect events that national histories often present in vacuums. The Spring of Organized Chaos in 1914 was connected to the Greek invasion of Anatolia in 1919, which in turn was connected to the Turkish re-occupation in 1922. In the end, Foçateyn was depopulated, Eski Foca was largely destroyed and it was no longer incorporated into world markets.
The epilogue provides a brief look at the first years of Foçateyn (now Foça) under the rule of the Republic of Turkey by way of contrast with the times before 1914. I also discuss my conclusions and the possible implications of this research, and I offer a future research agenda.
About the Sources
This book takes into account a variety of primary sources including memoirs, materials from the Ottoman state archives (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arsivleri, BOA), the oral historical archives of the Centre of Asia Minor Studies (Kévtpo Mıkpaolarıkov Xrovócov, CAMS here on) and those of Engin Berber, materials from the British Foreign Office archives (FO), French commercial almanacs, the Ottoman provincial almanac of Aydin and a variety of journals, newspapers, travelogues and ego documents by Ottomans and foreign observers. I have also studied photographs from my own personal collection and those of Félix Sartiaux and Reha Midilli. My aim was to use as many different sources as possible in as many different languages as possible in order to overcome the problem of methodological nationalism which often causes us to ignore sources outside our own languages. This is an attempt to bridge the gap between the histories of the people of the Empire who are now considered to be distinct subjects in Greek and Turkish historiographies. Such an approach also takes into account the need to simultaneously address both the local and the global actors of change.
In this book, none of these materials, whether derived from state archives, ego documents, photographs or deciphered telegrams, are taken at face value. All of them are perceived as being equally context-bounded and subjective in their own right. We should always remember that as historians, we construct narratives and that involves a process of selection. I selected the overlapping aspects of these different sources and attempted to present them in a meaningful and critical historical narrative. I present my selections transparently, declare my positions and my reasons for taking them, and leave the final judgement to the reader. When they arise, disputed aspects of the sources are presented in discussions in the footnotes.
Two oral history archives were repeatedly used in this research. The first is the Engin Berber Oral Historical Archive (EBOHA), which is the personal archive of Prof. Dr Engin Berber, who conducted a variety of oral history interviews in Foça in 1995 and 1997. Between 1994 and 1995, a group of historians consisting of Serhan Ada, Esra Danacioglu and Engin Berber started a project for the collection of oral historical material about the period of the Greek occupation between 1919 and 1922 and its effects on everyday life in the Izmir (Smyrna) area. They were enthusiastic about the possibilities that oral history can offer. Later, Pelin Bóke, Fahri Dikkaya and Sabri Sürgevil joined the group, and each scholar collected relevant material from different places in and around Izmir by way of individual interviews. These collections were never brought together in one publication, but some members of the project published their studies separately.” It appears that there was no systematic structure applied in all the separate interviews, but the set on Foçateyn raises comparable issues in a similar manner with the interviewees. I made use of all the cassettes he recorded at the time with the surviving elderly residents of Foçateyn. It should be noted, however, that the interviews were conducted many years after the end of the Ottoman Empire. Also, most of the interviewees were children at the time, and some were barely in their early twenties in the 1910s. There is, however, one interesting fact about almost all of the interviews that should be pointed out: although the interviewees were mostly asked about the troublesome years of 1919—22, they often talked more about coexistence and daily life, and at times the interviewees were wracked by emotions and made contradictory statements. The collection also provides ample information on topics extending beyond the period of Greek occupation as well. Most of the information given in the interviews complies with that which can be found in non-oral sources concerning the history of the period.
The second oral historical sources I often consulted were from the archives of CAMS, which was created in light of the fact that as time went by, there were fewer and fewer Greek refugees from Anatolia who could recall what they had experienced. Melpo Logotheti-Merlier (1890—1979), a musicologist who ‘set out from the mid-1930s to create a repository of information about Anatolia, including a collection of oral testimonies' established the core of what later became the Centre for Asia Minor Studies.? The centre collected interviews up until the 1970s. The interviewees were asked for basic information such as details about their villages and the outlying areas and approximate populations of where they lived, as well as daily life, education and religion.? The information was recorded textually, so there are no voice recordings for most of the interviews. In the archive, interviews with the elderly residents of Foçateyn (those from Eski Foça, Yeni Foça (New Foga)) and some other villages are categorized under the subfolders IIAAIEX $OKIEX and NEEX ®OKIEX. They are hand-written, and hence the real dialogues are inaccessible and the language was standardized by the interviewer. However, the collection is quite valuable as it illuminates the blind spots of established historiographies by providing a history from below. The interviewees were also asked about their relations with local Muslims (‘Turks’). This, just like the interviews in EBOHA, provides valuable insights about the intercommunal and inter-ethnic relations of the period. In the Greek context, as in the Turkish one, asking questions about the relations with the ‘other’ is in itself a political move: 'Having lived in Constantinople in her formative years, Merlier had experienced intercommunality first hand, but she also knew that the dominant line in Greece was strictly monocultural. Greek nationalism defined "the Greek" as the civilized opposite of the irredeemably barbarous "Turk", hence the histories of Anatolian coexistence were not only deemed fictions but a cause for shame. It was this threat to historical truth that Merlier's archive was designed to counteract’.'° Indeed that was why the interviews focused on everyday life. In my research, the overlapping themes and facts in different oral testimonies and oral archives constituted the backbone of my reconstructions.
The vast territories of the Ottoman Empire encompassed settlements that were once important centres of the ancient world, and naturally this attracted the attention of many archaeologists. Once such archaeologist who was commissioned by the French state to undertake excavations in Greece and Ottoman Western Anatolia was Félix Sartiaux (1876— 1944), who was also a railroad engineer and a polytechnician. As I will discuss in detail later, he was commissioned to conduct excavations in the county of Fogateyn. According to Sartiaux, the choice of the site was important for two main reasons. Eski Foça (IIaAou& xata) was an illustrious centre in the ancient world, and the residents there founded the Greek colony of Marseille. Despite this fact, the area had not been thoroughly researched even though it was bound up with the history of France. Secondly, there was competition among foreign archaeologists and it was only a matter of time before an Austrian or German company excavated the ruins.!! Sartiaux arrived in Fogateyn in 1913 and he stayed there until June 1914. He produced maps and photographs of Eski Foça and Yeni Foça, and also wrote his own personal accounts about the region. Later he went back to Eski Foga in 1919 and
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produced another set of photographs. The work of Sartiaux, ^ who was a philhellene and a pro-Entente figure during and after World War I, provides valuable information about aspects of daily life in Fogateyn, the events in 1914 and the situation in 1919. For that reason, his accounts are used
critically in this research.
The Boomtown
Scrolling through the pages of a contemporary tourist booklet for modernday Foga, you can see that it focuses on the remains of its ‘once glorious pasts’. Ruins and remains of the ancient Greek, Persian, Genoese and Ottoman periods of rule in the region are frequently mentioned in descriptions of Eski Foça.” Ironically, with the exception of some rare and more recently published booklets, the least advertised of these 'glorious pasts' is the Ottoman legacy, a legacy that one might naturally attribute to modern Turkey. Despite the lack of an appropriate presence in the booklets, many of Ottoman Foga's remains are relatively intact. This may seem surprising given the fact that the entire district of Ottoman Foga was devastated by expulsions, warfare and destruction in the period of turmoil between 1914 and 1922. Two factors, however, explain the relatively high number of architectural remnants. First of all, the municipality of Foça has focused on preservation and restoration in the last decade and that has helped save the remaining artefacts of the city’s Ottoman heritage. Secondly, and more importantly, most of major buildings in Ottoman Foça date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with the exception of three mosques, a mescid, a hamam, two castles and a few other buildings. That period was when Foga experienced its biggest economic, demographic and spatial expansion in more than a thousand years.
Unlike the impression one might get from the tourist booklets, in reality Foca only had two ‘glorious’ periods of growth and expansion in history. In both periods, the town of Eski Foca played the most pivotal role in the growth of the county. One period of expansion was in antiquity and the other started in the late 1820s with the start of Foçateyn's incorporation into the world economy. ^ The history of the former was rediscovered when the history of the latter was about to come to an end. Félix Sartiaux was the first person to rediscover the remnants of ancient Foça, Hañoaáo DOEKMOG, as a result of his excavations in 1913 and 1920. His early work became a source of inspiration and guidance for later generations and many archaeological excavations inspired by his work have been carried out. He discovered numerous remnants of the ancient Phokaian settlement, including sculptures, grotesques, Greek and Roman inscriptions, mosaics and religious sites. His findings confirmed that Foça indeed was a regional power in antiquity and it colonized many places on the Black Sea and the Western Mediterranean, including Marseilles in the south of France, the town where Sartiaux is believed to have been struck by the inspiration to come to Foga. In 1899, he attended the twenty-fifth-century celebration of the town’s founding by the Phokaians.’”
By the time Sartiaux started his first set of excavations in 1913, the county of Focateyn had been growing rapidly. The county’s share of trade in the local economy increased dramatically in contrast to traditional sectors of the economy, such as mining and agriculture. Growth attracted migrants and the population of the county grew, resulting in the development of new neighbourhoods. Foga attracted investors with the lively port-town of Eski Foça and its productive and accessible hinterland. The Ottoman commercial bourgeoisie had started to invest in promising boomtowns like Eski Foça in the middle of the nineteenth century, and these investments were mostly in real estate but also occasionally in business as well. Both the Ottoman state and the Orthodox community were interested in creating charitable institutions. The number of schools, shops and fine seaside stone yalis 6 increased in this period of expansion. Sartiaux walked the streets of this rather cosmopolitan, developing town of Eski Foga during his initial visit, and the Foça that he saw was Ottoman Foça, an imperial town at the height of its development. However, Sartiaux's first visit to Eski Foça ended unexpectedly in the spring of 1914 with the start of a chapter of expulsion and violence. These events radically changed the demographic, economic and cultural outlook of the county that Sartiaux first saw. The ousting of Ottoman Greeks that Sartiaux witnessed, the Greek occupation of 1919 and the subsequent Turkish struggle for independence that resulted in the Turkish re-occupation of Foçateyn in 1922 all constitute the local milestones of a more radical change.
The history of Fogateyn’s demise was also most visible in Eski Foga just like the history of its growth. Consequently, the emergence of Eski Foga as a boomtown and its later demise into a ghost town is at the centre of my narrative of transition. This is also because there is more photographic, official, oral and statistical information about Eski Foga than any other part of Fogateyn.
A View onto the Past: Path Dependency and Modernist Trajectories
Many historians delve into the ‘long nineteenth century" hoping to find the 'seeds of destruction' that they assume played a central role in how events unfolded at the dawn of the subsequent century in an age of extremes? in which nationalism, the most widespread form of 'extremes', changed the world dramatically. However, this seemingly rational enquiry yields problematic results unless the anachronistic nature of such an endeavour is put aside. The pursuit of looking for 'seeds of destruction', given our hindsight of what happened, automatically makes researchers accept the destructive chapters of history as inevitable discontents. A teleological narrative is built in which the violence and collapse of the Ottoman Empire was ‘inevitable’ and the evidence is interpreted in light of chat assumption. That is why much research builds up arguments in which even the smallest economic conflict or cultural difference is portrayed as an indication of antagonism. The agency of ordinary people or elites, which are interpreted as being harbingers of conflict, are given precedence in such analyses. This is also often due to underlying assumptions about the nature of national identities which see all antagonisms as the reflections of national conflicts by simultaneously making two ungrounded assumptions. Firstly, they assume the omnipresence of national identities and in doing so they de-historicize those identities. Secondly, they assign a superior role to national identities in people's decision-making processes, and it is on this point that I take a different stance.
I do not necessarily seek out 'seeds of destruction' in the nineteenth century in Fogateyn. Antagonisms are not the unavoidable result of national identities nor are they necessarily the basis for 'inevitable' future conflicts. They may or may not have been significant in the way events unfolded. The actions of the actors of history, both global and local, take place within certain constraints. And those constraints, which are formed at the intersection of different historical processes, form paths or trajectories that affect decisions and possible patterns of behaviour.'? In turn, those restrain the outcomes unless the conditions that form them are altered.
This is also true for the transition from empire to nation state in Foçateyn. The intersection of global actors such as states, markets and ideologies with the local historical peculiarities of Fogateyn in the long nineteenth century established a path that determined the positions and interactions of the actors of the period of crisis and transition in the twentieth century. The boundary between the global and the local is often permeable and the two constantly affect each other. This permeable relation was also present in Fogateyn, the local particularities of which, along with global actors, played roles in the establishment of an historical path. Changes in the social, demographic and economic life of this part of the Ottoman geography in the nineteenth century placed it on a "collision course' with the political centre of the Empire in the twentieth century precisely because of the historical path that emerged as a result of these along the coast.
The chapters of conflict and destruction that started as early as 1911 with the Italo-Turkish (Tripolitanian) War and continued through the Balkan Wars (1912—13) lasted until the end of the Turkish nationalist struggle (1922), engulfing Fogateyn in crises. Foçateyn's historical path, however, did not bring about sustained conflicts that gradually developed into crises in and of themselves. Rather, it brought about an 'alternative path' that the Ottoman centre had to deal with. It was not Fogateyn's own dynamics that caused conflict but it was the Ottoman centre's perception of those dynamics that brought on confrontation. The toll of destruction was much greater in Fogateyn compared to many other places between 1911 and 1922 precisely because of the nature of its historical path. Once Fogateyn was drawn into this rather global maelstrom of nationalist and imperialist conflicts of competition and survival, che path that was established in the nineteenth century played crucial roles in the way events unfolded.
A developmental trajectory, in other words a path, was established in Fogateyn as a result of the interaction of various processes. At the heart of these were two major issues: the penetration of European capitalism, which brought about incorporation into world markets, and the Ottoman state’s modernization reforms. They contributed to the establishment of a certain modernization trajectory in the long nineteenth century in Fogateyn. The Balkan Wars put this trajectory on a collision course with another one that was envisaged by the Unionist Young Turks, who seized power in the Empire in 1913. The modernist trajectory that affected Fogateyn and many other places in the Empire such as Alexandria, Beirut, Haifa, Izmir (Smyrna) and Thessaloniki (Selanik)? was a coastal phenomenon of modernity. Understanding the dynamics of that trajectory and understanding why Fogateyn fits such a pattern will reveal why the Unionists found themselves on a collision course with it after the Balkan Wars and how a new Fogateyn was created afterwards.
The Coastal Trajectory
The historical trajectory approach ‘suggests that the historical experience is spatially diverse, temporarily bounded, and follows a path-depended pattern'.^! Therefore at a certain moment in history, let's say the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman Empire, there were multiple historical experiences arising as the result of spatial differences within the Empire and all of those were manifestations of certain structures or paths that were brought about by occurrences both large and small. Such events are reproduced or reshaped in certain ways and in certain directions due to the path-dependent nature of the historical experience. To put it simply, ‘what has happened at an earlier point in time will affect the possible outcomes of a sequence of events occurring at a later point in time.” However, no causal structure or pattern is uniform through time, and a certain sequence can work differently under different conditions. This is why such research ‘investigates the locked-in effects of state-society and global-local relations that become entrenched over time”. It demonstrates that a certain set of events, both on the global and on the local levels, put the county of Fogateyn on a certain developmental trajectory which brought about its rise and contributed to its transformation into a battlefield of nationalisms in the following century. As argued by Cem Emrence, the Ottoman Middle East was characterized by three major ‘imperial paths’ during the nineteenth century: the coast, the interior and the frontier. Each trajectory represented distinct paths to modernity: "Ihe coastal framework represented the port cities and commercial hinterlands of Western Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean littoral; che interior path marked the inland experience of Anatolia, Syria and Palestine; and the frontier incorporated the contentious borderland regions of the Eastern Anatolia, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula”? In each distinct zone, 'political coalitions, economic networks, and collective claims sustained the distinct character of Ottoman trajectories. It was the middle classes on the coast, urban Muslim coalitions in the interior, and religious trust networks in the frontier that governed the region.” Each trajectory had certain groups (political coalitions or economic networks) and those in turn had their own collective claims, contentions and histories of acceptence or resistance, as well as political norms and types of rule (contested rule on the coast, consensual rule on the interior, thin rule on the frontier) and long-term outcomes based on the ‘entrenched’ and ‘locked-in’ paths that coalesced on the 'imperial path'.?“ The history of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century in Fogateyn was the history of a coastal trajectory in formation.
The coast was shaped by incorporation into world markets and the modernization reforms undertaken by the Ottoman state. The interaction of these two major and rather global processes with local dynamics on the coast resulted in the weakening of Ottoman rule and a simultaneous fasttracked spread of modernity. Ottoman rule in coastal areas was ‘contested’ and this contested nature made the coast an area of inter-state and capitalist rivalry. On the one hand, the presence of the Ottoman state and its reforming agenda made contracts enforceable and infrastructures more conducive for capitalism. On the other hand, capitalism created new networks, advances and relations that made the coast ‘slip away’ from effective imperial control." Foreign states took advantage of this power vacuum. The Great Powers used it to expand their imperial power, and the Ottomans, while constantly trying to restore their grip, used the vacuum to halt that expansion by playing rivals against each other; in the meantime, the Kingdom of Greece used it for its irredentist aims. Capitalists, namely foreign investors and the emerging local bourgeoisie, also took advantage of the contestation. Global investors turned inter-state rivalries into opportunities whereas the emerging bourgeoisie used its ‘locally embedded character” in Ottoman society to gain a foothold in the global capital influx without being shunted aside by larger capital owners. Lastly, economies of the places like Izmir, Beirut, Mersin and Eski Foça, major and minor hubs of Mediterranean trade, also took advantage of the ‘contested’ nature of the coast. They enjoyed the autonomy and wealth brought about by the growth of the nineteenth century and to some extent they broke away from the pressure of the Ottoman centre’s command economy, which was based on the principles of provisionism, traditionalism and fiscalism.^?
Class interest became a dominant drive of political contentions along the coast. Port cities and later port towns witnessed the emergence of a bourgeoisie and proletariat whose interests often collided with each other and with the Ottoman bureaucrats who represented the centre. Different agents of political contentions, sometimes also including actors from the interior, found each other to be ‘allies’ or ‘enemies’ throughout the everchanging dynamics of the coast. Although the proportion of the new bourgeoisie and the new proletariat was rather limited in the Ottoman Empire as a whole, their power and influence were much greater on the coast where they were concentrated.?? Port cities like Izmir, Thessalonica and Beirut, and port towns like Eski Foga, were among the places where the influence of the new classes was felt the most.
On the coast, residents, but especially merchants, became connected to global flows of capital and thus became the vanguards of modernity. Both the Muslim and non-Muslim middle classes were involved with trade on the coast, although the latter were much more numerous and influential. It was the non-Muslim middle class who 'enjoyed the spoils of foreign trade and European services but had limited political bargains with the Ottoman state’.’! While Ottoman Christians may have dominated business on the coast, trade between the port city and the hinterland was a different matter. That trade was often dominated by merchants who adhered to the same religion as the majority of the hinterland, and in many cases (such as the hinterlands of Izmir and Beirut), this group was Muslim.” The fact that Christians dominated in trade but were unable to make their political demands heard in the centre because of their limited bargaining capacity played a major role in the way Ottoman Christians positioned themselves vis-à-vis the Ottoman state. The coast became the spatial seat of modernity that represented middle-class values and global interactions, and it had a broad public space. Port cities like Thessaloniki, Izmir, Alexandria and Beirut constituted the most well-known examples of the cosmopolitan hubs of the coastal trajectory: "The port-city captured and reflected in concrete form the entire episode of incorporation. Its physical appearance, spatial layout, economic mechanisms, population dynamics, class structure, political aspirations and cultural life could only be understood through the prism of the colonial intercourse'.?? It was the port cities that produced the major constituents of the coastal trajectory, and they led to less traditionally oriented societies that were contested, mercantile, versatile and cosmopolitan.
Especially towards the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, port towns started to emerge as satellites of port cities. Around that time, 'Izmir and Beirut merchants transformed nearby commercial centres and invested money in booming towns. Subsequently, places like Jaffa, Haifa, Mersin and Samsun grew from isolated spots into regional port-towns'.?* A detail in the history of one of these upstart port towns, Haifa, is particularly important for understanding the Ottoman centre's perception of incorporation-driven growth. According to Seikaly, 'the Ottoman government planned a major harbour for Haifa, the only such initiative in the eastern Mediterranean, as part of its policy to centralize control and limit European encroachment. It was a project aimed at overshadowing Beirut, which was a source of political irritation to Istanbul because of the nationalist activities and pro-European orientations that thrived there. [...] Finally by building the harbour, the Ottoman government would have a purely Ottoman port.” Haifa, however, outgrew Ottoman authorities' expectations, as it was engulfed by incorporationdriven growth. However, the early stages of its emergence were indicative of Ottoman intentions to struggle against their 'contested' rule on the coast.
Eski Foga was also one such port town, driven not by the initiative of the state as in the case of Haifa but by a combination of capital investment, state modernization and a fortunate geographical position. The state's determining role in Eski Foga came about not through its emergence as a boomtown as with Haifa but through its demise. Unlike Haifa, which reached ‘its zenith in the 1930s under the British Mandate’ ,*° Eski Foça was a ghost town in the 1930s. Compared to the less promising start of Haifa, which had some 162 vessels docked at its harbour in 1850,” Eski Foça had 3,069 vessels docked at its harbour in 1893.7? In short, the history of Eski Foça is the history of a rapid beginning and an even more rapid demise. From 1884 to 1914, the population of the county of Fogateyn grew more than twofold. Labour migration was the principal source of population growth in Fogateyn, just as was the case in the other boomtowns of the eastern Mediterranean in the nineteenth century. Throughout this period, the Ottoman state, European capitalists and the merchants of Izmir invested in Fogateyn. The county, and especially its centre Eski Foga, was economically, demographically and spatially transformed.
In the nineteenth century two major revolutionizing forces, or perhaps it would be more correct to call them processes, contributed to the emergence of a coastal trajectory in the county of Foçateyn. These were incorporation into the core centres of the world economy and state-sponsored modernization brought about through the reformist agenda of the Ottoman state.
These forces, or processes, came into being almost simultaneously and interacted with one another. They brought forth the emergence of new networks, changes in the political order, changes in infrastructures and economic systems, and the spatial remaking of the coast. The result was a particular imperial trajectory towards modernity: the coastal path. All of these changes had elements that altered power relations, social and economic structures, and discourses.
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