Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul: Identity and Trauma Among Balkan Immigrants 9781350989610, 9781786731081

Table of contents :
Cover
Author Bio
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Introduction
Part I: Becoming a Minority in our Post-Ottoman Hometown
1. The Sultan's Last Visit to Rumeli
2. The Home City of Üsküp (Skpoje) Between the World Wars
3. Three Strikes: World War II, State Terrorism, and Communism
Part II: Taking the Plunge to a New Homeland
4. The Imperial City of Istanbul in a Downward Doze
5. The Hometown Association in Istanbul in the Early Years
6. The Rumeli Turks Mature in a Time of Coups
7. The Rumeli Turks Association Reaches Out
8. The Rumeli Dernek Deepens
Epilogue I: Rumeli Muslims Support their Own and others in Istanbul
Epilogue II: Refugees Fleeing into Europe through Macedonia
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Back Cover

Citation preview

S

Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul is a rare ethnography of an Islamic urban group based on extensive archival research and interviews in various languages across Istanbul, Skopje and Kosovo. Trix’s unique approach brings a human element to the study of forced migration, conflict, and trauma. This is an important book for academics and policymakers interested in the Balkans, the Middle East, Turkey and migration studies.

“A beautifully written, lively, detailed discussion of the history of Balkan migrants in Istanbul. It is thorough, well documented, has a historical and contemporary perspective, and people in the story come out as real people. There is no such book like it on the topic.” Esra Özyürek, Associate Professor and Chair for Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute, London School of Economics

Frances Trix is Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at Indiana University. She has published numerous books and edited collections, including Albanians in Michigan (2001) and The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb (2009).

Cover image: Man with tea, Istanbul. (© Frances Trix) Design: Positive2

www.ibtauris.com

Identity and Trauma Among Balkan Immigrants

“Gracefully and very accessibly written, highly scholarly, ethically and personally engaged without sentimentalizing its subject.” Margaret Mills, Professor Emerita, Ohio State University

Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul

Frances Trix analyzes the development of the oldest such association, originally founded to welcome new migrants as they arrived from Skopje after World War II, and shows how Islam is central to its structure and practices. Her wide-ranging study variously focuses on its leadership, the growing role of women in the organization, and the importance of music and poetry in coping with exile. In so doing, she raises wider questions concerning the preservation and articulation of identity amongst migrant communities.

Frances Trix

ince the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8, approximately two and a half million Muslims living in the Balkans have been forced from their homes. Some fled following World War II, and traveled east by train to Istanbul with no more than a suitcase. And yet 50 years later, one of their migrant associations was second only to the Red Crescent in providing aid to the urban poor of Istanbul.

Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul Identity and Trauma Among Balkan Immigrants

Frances Trix

Frances Trix is Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at Indiana University. She has published numerous books and edited collections, including Albanians in Michigan (2001) and The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb (2009).

“A beautifully written, lively, detailed discussion of the history of Balkan migrants in Istanbul. It is thorough, well documented, has a historical and contemporary perspective, and people in the story come out as real people. There is no such book like it on the topic.” Esra O¨zyu¨rek, Associate Professor and Chair for Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute, London School of Economics “Gracefully and very accessibly written, highly scholarly, ethically and personally engaged without sentimentalizing its subject.” Margaret Mills, Professor Emerita, Ohio State University

Frontispiece The arrival in Istanbul of a train of Rumeli Turk refugees from the war in the Balkans, 1878

URBAN MUSLIM MIGRANTS IN ISTANBUL Identity and Trauma Among Balkan Immigrants

FRANCES TRIX

Published in 2017 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2017 Frances Trix The right of Frances Trix to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of Modern Turkey 24 ISBN: 978 1 78453 609 1 eISBN: 978 1 78672 108 2 ePDF: 978 1 78673 108 1 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Garamond Three by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

This book is dedicated to my son, Ramsay Ilyas Trix, who accompanied me to weekly meetings with Muslim migrants throughout his childhood, with long stays in Turkey and Kosova; And to my father, Herbert Phelps Trix (1921–2003), who stood by me in my study of different languages and peoples in Detroit, the Balkans, and the Middle East.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Prologue Introduction

ix xi xiii 1

I. Becoming a Minority in Our Post-Ottoman Hometown

15

1. The Sultan’s Last Visit to Rumeli 2. The Home City of U¨sku¨p (Skopje) between the World Wars 3. Three Strikes: World War II, State Terrorism, and Communism

21

II. Taking the Plunge to a New Homeland

97

4. The Imperial City of Istanbul in a Downward Doze 5. The Hometown Association in Istanbul in the Early Years 6. The Rumeli Turks Mature in a Time of Coups 7. The Rumeli Turks Association Reaches Out 8. The Rumeli Dernek Deepens

47 73

103 127 153 180 203

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URBAN MUSLIM MIGRANTS IN ISTANBUL

Epilogue I Rumeli Muslims Support Their Own and Others in Istanbul Epilogue II Refugees Fleeing into Europe through Macedonia Glossary Notes Bibliography Index

228 233 235 238 251 262

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece. The arrival in Istanbul of a train of Rumeli Turk refugees from the war in the Balkans, 1878 (P. Boude, Russes & turcs d’orient, 1878). Figure 1. Map of forced exile and death of Muslims from the 1912–13 Balkan Wars (Justin McCarthy, 2010).

xvi

Figure 2. Hacer Abla and Hidayet Hanım at the gathering for elders (F. Trix).

17

Figure 3. Purple tulips (F. Trix).

18

Figure 4. Sultan Res¸ad stepping into the carriage after prayer in Salonika, 1911.

29

Figure 5. Thousands praying with the Sultan on the battlefield of Kosovo, 1911.

34

Figure 6. Map of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans before the First Balkan War, 1911 (Kelley L. Ross, PhD, Freisian.com).

40

Figure 7. Map of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans after the First Balkan War, 1912 (Kelley L. Ross, PhD, Freisian.com).

41

Figure 8. Ottoman map of losses in black in “Rumeli” in the Balkan Wars.

45

Figure 9. Famous Ottoman stone bridge of Skopje and city, 1918.

51

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URBAN MUSLIM MIGRANTS IN ISTANBUL

Figure 10. Mukaddes Hanım surrounded by her students in Turkey.

82

Figure 11. Re-enactment migrants at Sirkeci Station, Istanbul (Kosova Prizrenliler Ku¨ltu¨r ve Yardımlas¸ma Derneg˘i, Bir Kofer bir Sandık, 2009).

101

Figure 12. Mosaic of Christ in Kariye Mosque/Chora Church.

108

Figure 13. Su¨leymaniye Mosque (photo by John T. Walbridge).

113

Figure 14. Map of Istanbul.

117

Figure 15. Vardar Association members with young boys on day of circumcision (photo by Vardarlılar Derneg˘i).

130

Figure 16. Hidayet Hanım with s¸ekerpare (F. Trix).

143

Figure 17. Musicians playing at the dernek on Saturday afternoon as people sing (F. Trix).

166

Figure 18. Women’s group in dernek with Muala Hanım, head of women’s group, and Suna Hanım of dernek staff (F. Trix). 183 Figure 19. Dernek women putting out new clothing for poor children during Ramadan (F. Trix).

186

Figure 20. Women in dernek with mevlid chanters (F. Trix).

225

Figure 21. Preparations at dernek for 40-day mevlid for Hacer Abla (F. Trix).

226

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

There are so many people in Istanbul and the Balkans whose assistance made this book possible. First and foremost I recognize the people of the Rumeli Tu¨rkleri Ku¨ltu¨r ve Dayanıs¸ma Derneg˘i, whose hospitality and generosity with their time and experience was essential. These included, among many others: Necati Aydınog˘lu, Hidayet Ilimsever, Muhterem Tahtais¸leyen, Mukaddes Atlı, Emel Salihog˘lu, Vecihe Emirog˘lu, Zerrin Vardar, Suna Kocaimamog˘lu, and Mualla Eris¸, the president of the women’s group. I also met with and interviewed people from other Balkan migrant associations, including the Prizrenliler, the Kosovalılar, the Gostivarlılar, and the Pris¸tineliler. I am especially grateful to Ismail ¨ zkılıc of the Prizrenlıler for his assistance early on in my research and O Niyazi Bey of the Pris¸tineliler. I especially acknowledge Hidayet Ilimsever for her special kindness and patience in working with me on Turkish embroidery. Her knowledge of Balkan customs is truly remarkable. There are also Turkish scholars whose work I built on. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, of the Ottoman National Archives, an expert in history of migration from the Balkans, was a guiding light in my work. For my research in Istanbul, I had a Fulbright Research Fellowship. I gratefully acknowledge the Fulbright Scholarship Organization, the Turkish Fulbright Committee, and Sabancı University for sponsoring me. Professor Leyla Neyzi of Sabancı University, one of the finest anthropologists I know, was also a model to me when I was in Turkey, and I regularly use her work in my classes. I also thank Dr. Erdem C¸ipa, now of the University of Michigan, who first mentioned to me, in 2004, the location of the Prizren migrant association in Istanbul.

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I stayed an extra half-year to be in Istanbul for a second Ramadan. For this time I had an appointment at ISAM, the Islamic Research Center in Bag˘larbas¸ı. I acknowledge the support of Dr. Nuri Tınaz, Dr. Aydın Topalog˘lu, and Hilal Kazan. In the Balkans I met with people in Skopje and Gostivar in Macedonia and in Prishtine and Prizren in Kosova. Here I gratefully acknowledge Suzana Musli, Ilhami Emin, and Prof. Hivzi Islami of the Kosova Academy of Sciences and Arts. In writing up my research I was most fortunate to be awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at the Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, 2012–13. I also had a sabbatical from Indiana University for which I am grateful. I received a College Arts & Humanities Institute Research travel grant from Indiana University to do some final work in Skopje. Behind this was the patience of my husband, Prof. John Walbridge, who came to Turkey, also on a Fulbright, and has seen this project from its early days in Istanbul through to the end. There was also the longstanding support of my son Ramsay, who called me daily during my long weeks and months of writing.

PROLOGUE

“All they had to eat was grass.” My gentle Turkish conversation teacher, Feyza Hanım, who never spoke harshly to us, continued, “And you, Westerners, you do not notice refugees unless they are Christian.”1 Never had she spoken this way before, nor would she speak this way again. Why had I never heard of these people, both Muslims and Jews, who had been forced from their homes in the Balkans? We were in a small windowless room of the graduate library of the University of Michigan where we happily met each week to practice spoken Turkish under the kind ministrations of Feyza Hanım. Our small group included a retired US Army colonel who had served in Turkey for many years under NATO auspices, a geography professor who had done research in southern Turkey, and myself, a linguistic anthropologist who loved the Turkish language and worked in Muslim immigrant communities outside Detroit, where I had grown up. We had been talking about the fall of the Ottoman Empire, an empire that had stretched from North Africa to Iraq, from the Balkans to Yemen, and had lasted from 1299 to 1923. It had declined and lost territory over time, especially in the nineteenth century. Colonel McLeod had mentioned the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8, a war in the Balkans that had resulted in the Ottomans losing much territory there. He had spoken of battles, but then Feyza Hanım reminded him – and the rest of us – of the people who had been caught in the path of the armies and paramilitaries during that war.

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Refugees of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 – 8 There had been hundreds of thousands of refugees, local Muslims and Jews who had been living in cities and towns in the Balkans for centuries, but who had been forced to flee the victorious forces of Russians, Serbs, Rumanians, and Bulgarians. The refugees had fled from the marauding troops, and some had escaped to the Ottoman capital – to Constantinople, or Istanbul, as we call it today – and others on to Anatolia. I only learned this when I began reading about this war and its aftermath. As an indication of the numbers and condition of the refugees, nine new hospitals were built in Istanbul for the refugees who were struck with smallpox, typhoid, and typhus, besides the wounds from Cossack lances, Bulgarian knives, and attacks on women and girls, referred to as “outrages and excesses” in the accounts of the times.2 Clearly many must have also died on the way. The courtyards of Istanbul’s many mosques, its cemeteries, and homes of the wealthy were also full of refugees. The population of the capital actually doubled.3 The Sultan himself founded a Commission for the muhajir, the “emigrants,” as the refugees were known. The term has positive associations for Muslims, since the Prophet Muhammad was a muhajir when he had to leave the city of Mecca for Medina in 622 in what became the founding event for the Islamic community. Indeed, the Muslim calendar is dated from the year of hijra, the year of the migration. But I do not think many of the Balkan refugee women were thinking of this as they tried to provide for their children through the winter of 1878, far from their homes, and many without their menfolk who had been killed by Russian or Bulgarian troops. The Russians had invaded Ottoman Europe in the spring of 1877 in hopes of taking the Straits and Constantinople. Their troops had headed through Bessarabia (Moldova) and crossed the Danube, where they encountered Turkish villages and Ottoman troops. From April 1877 to the following January 1878, there had been fighting across the Balkans and expulsions of half a million people. As described by Layard, the British Ambassador to Constantinople at the time, who was kept closely informed by British military embedded within the Ottoman military as well as by British consuls and physicians who were near the front line:

PROLOGUE

xv

A general exodus of the Musulman population was taking place from the districts occupied and threatened by the Russians to the north of the Balkans. The Mohammadans [sic] to the south of those mountains were preparing to leave their villages and fly before the enemy. They were panic struck by the reports that reached them of the horrible outrages and massacres which the Bulgarians and Cossacks had inflicted upon their unhappy fellow countrymen [. . .]. What usually happened was this: When the Russians entered a Musulman town or village they proclaimed to the inhabitants that they would suffer no molestation and be protected if they remained quietly in their houses and surrendered their arms. As soon as they had complied the weapons taken from them were given over to the Bulgarians who either immediately or as soon as the Russian authorities had withdrawn commenced a general massacre of the defenseless Mohammedans, first inflicting upon them horrible tortures and outraging their women. It was proved that in many cases when the wretched victims attempted to escape they were driven back to the slaughter or into the burning houses by the Cossacks or were prodded to death by their spears.4 In this manner, by the end of the war, Muslim peoples in former Ottoman lands taken over by Serbia, Montenegro, and Rumania were almost completely gone.5 In eastern “Rumeli,” as the Ottomans called the Balkans, 520,000 Muslims fled, with a presumed 288,000 killed. Some went south to parts of Macedonia that were still under Ottoman rule, while others, along with local Jews, continued east and south to the city of Edirne and on to Constantinople. Official statistics on refugees, particularly during wartime, are difficult to ascertain. One can only compare general census data of numbers of Muslims in regions before the war to numbers who remained afterwards. More specific data from the time of the conflict are provided in diplomatic dispatches from British Ambassador Layard in Constantinople to the British authorities, collected in three volumes from 1877 to 1880, chronicling the plight of refugees in European Turkey, both during the war as they sought food, shelter, medical care, and transportation and afterward when they tried to return to their villages, but were prevented by their Christian neighbors.6 Ambassador Layard’s wife organized relief

ë

ë

Bitola 80% of Muslim Villages Wholly or Partly Destroyed

Turkish and Albanian Refugees

Figure 1

fu

ge es

Re scu

ed by Sh

To Aegean Provinces

To Northwest Provinces

Refugees return to Western Thrace, 1913

To Mediterranean Provinces

To Central Provinces

Death and Forced Exile of More than 1.5 Million Muslims in Ottoman Europe

ip

Alexandroupolis 3,000 killed

Thrace Region 200,000 killed or died of disease or starvation

Edirne 25,000 soldiers who surrendered killed or deliberately starved to death

Map of forced exile and death of Muslims from the 1912 – 13 Balkan Wars

Re

Kavala 7,000 refugees killed

Half of 1,500 refugees from Drama killed

Drama surrendered wounded soldiers nearly all killed

Orman-Petrich 1,500 returning refugees killed

Serres 2,000 killed or died of disease and starvation

Melnik -Radoviš most Muslim villages plundered or destroyed

Osturino 1,200 returning refugees killed or die of starvation and disease

Kumanovo-Skopje 5,000 killed

Priština 5,000 killed

Bulgarian, Greek, Montenegrin, and Serbian Invasions

Debar 2,000 killed

Representative Attacks on Turks and Albanians, according to British Consuls

Great Mortality Northern Albania Nearly Destroyed

ć

(Some Rounding Error)

Muslim Dead and Refugees in Aftermath of the Balkan Wars (not including an estimated 100,000 dead in Albania)

t o E g yp t

PROLOGUE

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work for soldiers, and especially for refugees, throughout their period of residence. The ambassador’s descriptions of 8,000 to 18,000 refugees arriving daily in Constantinople in open train wagons in the winter of 1878 are starkly moving.7 There are even pen and ink drawings, from newspapers at the time, at the end of the volumes of diplomatic documents, chronicling the Russian burning of Nig˘bolu with people trying to escape, Turkish families huddled along the train tracks of Filibe (now known as Plovdiv in Bulgaria), and the arrival in Istanbul in the middle of winter of trains packed inside and out with desperate emigrants from the Balkans.8

Six Waves of Forced Migrants from the Balkans to Turkey in the Twentieth Century The wave of largely Muslim refugees from the Balkans to Turkey from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8 was followed by six more waves of Muslim forced migrants in the twentieth century. If the nineteenth century and the refugees of the disintegrating Ottoman Empire had escaped my notice, at least I should have been more aware of what had happened in the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, I learned, there were 1.5 million more Muslims forced out of the Balkans. These six waves of Muslims from the Balkans to Turkey came after the Balkan Wars of 1912– 13, after World War I, between the world wars, after World War II from 1953 to 1965, at the time of growing nationalisms in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria in the 1980s, and during the Bosnian and Kosovar wars in the 1990s. I had heard of only the third and the last of these six waves of migrations. The third was early in the interwar period, beginning in 1923 with the Lausanne Treaty and its population transfers between Turkey and Greece. Over a million Orthodox Christians fled to Greece from Anatolia with others expelled from Cappadocia, while about half a million Muslims were expelled from Greece and Thrace to Anatolia to make room for the Anatolian Greeks. Most people directly involved suffered deeply,9 but they were not consulted. Indeed it was seen as a precedent for later demographic engineering, like the expulsion of millions of Germans from Eastern Europe after World War II,10 and that of Muslims from India in 1947.

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But why had I not known of most of these migrations of Muslims from the Balkans? I had lived in Turkey and in the Balkans. I speak Turkish and a Balkan language from the central region where many of these forced migrations took place. I had heard of people “moving to Turkey,” but never hundreds of thousands of refugees or forced migrants, let alone 1.5 million people in the twentieth century alone. Was there a conspiracy of silence? Certainly the countries the refugees and migrants came from were not particularly interested in documenting their departures. These were Balkan countries with relatively new nationalisms that were intertwined with religion such that to be a good Greek you needed to be Greek Orthodox. So Greeks would not talk about how many Muslims had been expelled. Nor would Serbs or Rumanians, Bulgarians or Macedonians, all of whom saw the Muslims in their midst as leftovers from the Ottoman times – times they regarded as having held them back. But why had the emigrants themselves not talked of their experience? In Greece there are whole archives of oral history of those who came from Anatolia. Yet in Turkey there is comparatively little of the corresponding experience of Muslims. At the end of the twentieth century Turks started to research and write about it more, but it was late. Many people have passed on. It is the grandchildren of muhajir in some cases who are finally asking questions. But as an American, I come from a country of immigrants. And I was drawn to these people by my Turkish teacher and by the neglect by the world of these Muslim forced migrants. How could so many people from Europe be so ignored by the world in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? And why had they been so silent for so long? In the following study of Muslims from the central Balkans who migrated to Istanbul in the twentieth century, I will let them speak and tell their stories. These are proud people who do not complain; much is expressed through ritualized events, song, civic associations, poetry, and exquisite embroidery.

Shared Mourning at a Migrant Center in Istanbul As an example, in the first month of my research, I attended a memorial mevlud for a muhajir who had recently passed away in Istanbul. He was from Skopje in Macedonia, and the mevlud was held at a community

PROLOGUE

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center of Balkan people largely from the city of Skopje of which he had been a member. A mevlud is an Islamic event whose name refers to “birth”; it is centered around prayers that recount the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. Mevluds can be recited at major life occasions, but especially at 40-day memorials after someone has died, at one-year memorials, and, as in this case, at 52-day memorials after death. There were about 150 men in suits on the main floor, filling the front and back rooms of the migrant association center. An imam and a religious chanter were on the far side of the front room under the three photographs that I would come to see as “the Rumeli Turk cultural trinity”: Yahya Kemal, the poet of U¨sku¨p (Skopje) on the left; Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk, the founder of modern Turkey, who was from Salonika in Ottoman Macedonia, in the center; and Mehmet Akıf Ersoy, the writer of the Turkish national anthem, whose father came from I˙pek (Peja/Pec ) in Kosova, on the right. I quickly walked downstairs to the library area to be with the women. In the basement hallway I passed between the two large reproductions from the Military Museum, one of Ottoman soldiers in the fourteenth century first crossing into the area in Europe that would become Rumeli on one side, and some battle scene on the other. There were boxes of dry food piled up for the families that the migrant association supported each month. Inside the library there were about 50 women in headscarves seated, while young women served them. The head of the women’s group gave me a place of honor next to the widow of the man who had passed away. She had on a white headscarf and was carefully dressed, and deeply sad. I recognized some of the women whom I had seen at the women’s meeting, but they were in their own realms, with eyes closed, nodding or chanting. As the recitation of the mevlud had already begun I could not talk with the widow, but I greeted her respectfully. The head of the women’s group brought me a plate with simit pogaca, the U¨sku¨p specialty that was no longer made as well in Macedonia as in Istanbul, a wheat-based, soft biscuit with bo¨rek buttery filling that was warm and delicious. She also brought me ayran, the slightly salty yogurt drink that went so well with it. I ate carefully, listening to the recitation that was being piped down from the loudspeaker from the floor above – such a beautiful rhythmic and emotive recitation.

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Each time the name “Muhammad” was said, the women would put their right hands to their hearts. Many knew the verses, and, sitting in the chairs facing the door of the library, they chanted along. The widow was in front of them, with her back to the map of the Balkans on the wall, and I was next to her. There were also women sitting in chairs in the hallway of the basement, including the young women who had served us, and the three daughters of the man who had died were there, too. The chanter knew how to pause as he sang of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad: nur fouq an-nur – that is, “spiritual light above spiritual light.” At one point everyone stood up and faced the left side of the door. That had us all facing the map of the Balkans with Macedonia in reddish pink, as were Turkey and Bosnia. It seemed like a sort of mihrab, the prayer niche in the mosque that signals the direction to pray to face Mecca. Someone put my hand on my heart. All were praying. It was at this point that the Prophet was born, and all were showing respect. We said a fatiha, the first chapter of the Qur’an, and then sat down again. There were more verses on other prophets, and the mevlud slowly drew to a close. A woman came over to me and told me she would explain things to me later. I nodded. The imam then said a prayer for the beloved dernek, the migrant association, and the man who had given so much to it, and for the spirit of Atatu¨rk. It was a good prayer and well delivered. Amin, we all said near the end, for the health of the people here; amin for the family of the man who had passed; amin for the country that nourished them; amin for the wishes of the people here and in the future, amin. Indeed, the mevlud had an intercessory aspect to it. People then stood and greeted each other. At this time, warm helva was served to everyone. Helva is a dense wheat-based dessert whose sweetness is meant to take away the sadness of death. And water was passed out, with tea for those who desired it. The widow, who had been weeping throughout the service, shared some helva with her youngest daughter. I was finally able to talk to her. I asked about her husband. “He was such a good man,” she said, “but he was taken ill, was two and a half months in the hospital and then twenty months at home.” At that moment a younger woman came up. She was a relative who had helped take care of the man who had died. She explained that he could not speak or do anything. He could barely raise a finger. I later found out he had had a brain hemorrhage. “How

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hard it must have been,” I said. She had to be worn out with caring for her husband. She looked tired, but her hair was well dressed. She had been through the works. “He must have died during the holy month of Ramadan,” I noted. “Yes, the first week,” she said, and she smiled. That was an honor. Zerrin Hanım, who had promised to explain things, came over, and we talked about the mevlud. “We do this for births, for memorials, and important occasions,” she said. “It is not in the Qur’an but we do it.” I told her that I found it a beautiful tradition, and that the reciter had been very fine. I said that I had read the Mevlid-i S¸erif by Su¨leyman C¸elebi, a famous Turkish mevlud, but this was the first time I had ever heard it, and hearing it was so powerful, especially around people who knew it well. I asked about prayers around the funeral and memorials for the dead. “When someone dies,” she said, “the evening we put them in the ground, we have ilahis, up to one thousand. You know this from your work with the tarikat, the Sufi orders.” I had studied with a Sufi, or mystic Muslim leader, for over 20 years,11 and I knew these chants well. “And you feel the closeness of God in your veins. Then on the seventh day, we recite the Ya Sin Sura [the chapter from the Qur’an that relates especially to death]; we do that often. Then on the fortieth day, too. And on the fifty-second day the mevlud.” She spoke about their ways: When we became a minority,12 we came together to nourish each other and protect the ways. We show much respect to guests. When a guest comes, the host stands while offering water and waits until the guest finishes. In our marriages, if love comes, good, but there must above all be respect. The bride used to stand all the time while serving others. A woman in a white scarf asked me if I remembered her. “Yes,” I said. “You read the Ya Sin at the gathering of elders.” She was pleased. I was glad I had remembered her. Another woman wanted to know if I knew the Qur’an. “Not well,” I said. “How old were you when you started to study the Qur’an?” I asked her. “Seven,” she said. “My parents died when I was young, so I was brought up by my grandparents. My grandfather was a hafiz.” That meant he had memorized the entire Qur’an. She insisted on finding me a copy of the Ya Sin Sura to begin to study.

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Then the head of the women’s group spontaneously gave me a pin of their association. It was of a man on a horse with a banner with three crescents on it. Was he a Turk heading to the Balkans in early Ottoman times, bringing the Muslim faith with him? That could imply that the people who had come to Turkey from the Balkans in the various migrations in recent times were actually returning, although we know historically that the vast majority of Balkan Muslims were local European people – Albanians, Bosnians, and other Balkan people – who had converted to Islam after the arrival of the Ottomans. In any case, this group knew how to value its members, as shown in the mevlud and the attendance at the mevlud. In such a migrant community, death has a special significance. Those born in the new land cannot fully understand the loss their parents experience. Still, they know that each death of a migrant is the loss of a vital link, the loss of a shared memory of the homeland. The group works to pass on shared identity, so in the memorials, the need to bind together is especially strong. It is here that the mevlud rituals are most moving, for they bind the passing of the migrant with something that is culturally powerful in the evocation of the Prophet’s birth, aesthetically beautiful in its recitation, and emotionally reaffirming in the participation of community. These rituals thus carry participants beyond suffering and loss, beyond life passages, well beyond what they have coped with in their two rapidly ¨ sku¨p (Skopje) and Istanbul. changing cities of U

INTRODUCTION

This is a study of forced migration of urban Muslims from the central Balkans to urban Turkey in the twentieth century. At the same time this is the story of two cities – U¨sku¨p/Skopje and Istanbul. Skopje is a city in Macedonia in the central Balkans where many of the migrants I studied came from, while Istanbul is a much larger city in modern Turkey that the migrants reached by train and where they settled. Like Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities1, this can be seen as a sort of “Muslim Tale of Two Cities.” Dickens’ cities were Paris and London, but Dickens could assume his readers knew the cities of which he wrote. With Skopje and Istanbul I will need to describe Skopje on the Vardar River and Istanbul, the former Constantinople, on the Bosphorus Straits and Sea of Marmara. In Dickens’ book, the association of Paris was with danger at the time of the French Revolution, while London was a place of relative safety. Similarly for Muslims just after World War II, Skopje had become a place where police came in the night, where Idrisova Prison could be a place of no return, where property that had been in their families for generations was confiscated, where their very names often disqualified them for work, and where those who had work could lose their positions if they were caught fasting for Ramadan. In short, Skopje was a place of insecurity coupled with fear. In contrast, Istanbul had become a dream of safety, a vision of refuge where others had gone before but which was still unknown to them. More centrally, though, this is a study of how urban Muslim migrants met their own needs in their new environment over time through a

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remarkable migrant association in Istanbul. Migrants from Skopje built on taking care of fellow townsfolk to taking care of those in need. It began with the event known as “we met the trains”, that brought their migrant association to life. Trainloads of migrants from the Balkans arrived every day at the station in Istanbul. Men from Skopje who were already living in Istanbul tried to meet the trains to help the migrant families make contact with relatives and find them places to stay. But they soon realized something more had to be done, for they could not keep missing work when they went to help their fellow townsmen. So they organized to allot each man one day a month to meet the trains. And they rented a nearby warehouse where families could stay temporarily. It was from these actions that their migrant organization grew. This occurred in the fourth wave of forced migration from the Balkans in 1953, a wave that lasted until 1965. I focus on this because it is the oldest wave I can study ethnographically – that still has enough living people I can talk with, and whose experiences and memories and ways of viewing the world can be shared. I study the development of migrant associations with special focus on the oldest association from Skopje. Immigrant groups are full of tensions, and this group was no different. Further, the political context was volatile, for Turkey in the second half of the twentieth century had three major political coups: in 1960, in 1971, and in 1980, the last of which included the closure of most civic associations. I trace the growth of the migrant association over time, the place of Islam in its structure and practices, and how it weathered the political coups. What is especially rare is that this is a longitudinal study; I worked in the archives of the migrant association and have over 50 years of documents of its activities. Throughout I intersperse life stories of members of the association. An association lives through the experiences and relationships of its members. I document how this association, while still continuing to serve its migrant base, began to reach out to serve the urban poor of Istanbul. I trace the growing role of women and how in the 1990s the association reached back, after the fall of communism in eastern Europe, to help the Balkan homeland. At the same time I show how the migrant association has continued over time to gird social and artistic bonds of music,

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poetry, and song for people who have lost their homeland but not their sense of themselves. And, finally, I document in the twenty-first century how the migrant association continues to reach out within Turkey to fund scholarships for needy students of different backgrounds. This is truly rare with migrant groups. But the real comparison is with international aid. What this association puts to shame is much international aid that is rarely based on local leadership or cultural needs and strengths. The Muslim structure of the association and earlier Ottoman values that are shared by the community work to preserve the dignity of those being assisted.

Main Questions and Perspectives Who are these urban migrants? And how did they come to view themselves in Istanbul over time? These are important questions for understanding their organizational skills and how they coped over time in Istanbul. At first glance, it would seem that these Balkan Muslim migrants would have much in common with the forced migrants in Rene´e Hirschon’s perceptive study of Greek forced migrants from Anatolia to Piraeus, Greece.2 Indeed, Hirschon conducted her study 50 years after the Anatolian Greeks had settled in Piraeus; similarly, I did my study about 50 years after the Muslims from Skopje had settled in Istanbul. The Greeks came in the chaos of war in large numbers and in the context of the Lausanne population transfers of 1922– 3. The Muslims came after World War II when communism had set in and many could see they had limited prospects in their homeland. As I interacted more with the urban Muslim migrants from the central Balkans in Istanbul, what I also came to understand about them is that they had preserved much of their Ottoman cultural background. They were used to living in a society of different religions and ethnicities, but where ethnicity was of much less import than religion. Muslim annual holidays had continued to structure the Balkan migrants’ lives, whereas secularism had affected many urban Turks’ lives in Istanbul. In other ways their Ottoman heritage was most telling. Hirschon, too, noted that the earlier Greek migrants from Anatolia had preserved pride in their Ottoman cultural roots, but these were from the period

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before 1908. After that, there was more influence around Istanbul of Western European ideas and trends, including secularism that pervaded modern Turkey in its early decades after 1923. This secularism was in direct contrast to what the Balkan Muslim migrants were used to when they arrived mid-century. Historically the Balkans were on the edge of empire and so were more conservative in retaining earlier values. Where modern Turkey changed to the Latin alphabet in 1928, the Turks in the Balkans continued to use the Ottoman script – that is, the Arabic alphabet – for writing Turkish until 1944. The Ottoman Empire had been defeated in 1912 in Skopje, yet these Balkan Muslims had hung on as a political minority under Slavic rule. The Ottoman Empire had ceased to exist in Turkey in 1923, yet still they persisted. And so, when many felt forced out of their homes in the Balkans after World War II and arrived in Istanbul in the early 1950s and 1960s, they brought with them Ottoman cultural patterns that had long since passed away in much of modern Turkey. I came to see the Balkan migrants culturally as “heirs of the lost realm” in the sense that they had preserved and carried with them the values, lifeways, and language they had always known and that had been part of former Ottoman lands. I argue that they integrated into modern urban Turkey through their Ottoman heritage. I draw the phrase “heirs of the lost realm” from an amalgam of what the migrants called themselves, a phrase by Atatu¨rk on such immigrants, and the first lines of a famous poem on Skopje by Yahya Kemal. The migrants called themselves evlad-i fatihan, an Ottoman phrase that can be translated as “children or heirs of the Conqueror,” here referring to the Ottoman sultan, a distinctly Ottoman framing, emphasizing connection for those from the Balkans with those in Turkey through the Ottoman sultan. Atatu¨rk’s quote was: “Immigrants are our lost countries’ national memories.” He was referring to Ottoman territories that had been lost. Here he was using a newly minted Turkish word for “countries.” But I took the “lost” from here. Finally, the migrants did not talk about the Ottoman Empire so much, nor had the Ottomans referred to it as an “empire.” It was their devlet, or as in the first line of Yahya ¨ sku¨p is the diyari of Yıldırım Beyazit Sultan, Kemal’s poem on Skopje, U an archaic word which I have translated as “realm.” The Balkans had been known as “Rumeli,” one of the two main parts of the Ottoman Empire for over 500 years, the other part being Anatolia,

INTRODUCTION

5

known as “Rum.” Skopje had become an Ottoman city in 1392, even before Constantinople, which was taken over by the Ottomans in 1453. The migrants from Skopje often reminded me of this with pride. Where there have been political realms that continued for significant periods of time, there have been people who maintained the cultural ways and values of them after their fall. The Ottomans were in southeast Europe from 1350 to 1912, that is, for over 500 years. Similarly, Muslim dynasties were in Spain from 711 to 1492, that is, for over 700 years. Many of the Muslims of al-Andalus, as they called themselves, when they were expelled, fled to North Africa, where they continued the ways of al-Andalus. They were also “heirs of a lost realm.” The Jews who were expelled from al-Andalus and maintained Ladino, the Spanish of that time, can also be seen as “heirs of a lost realm.” Mazower’s fine book, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430– 1950,3 includes much on the Ladinos of Salonika in an urban Ottoman Balkan context. And more recently, with the Hapsburg Empire, especially the Archduchy of Austria as a central Hapsburg land that lasted 700 years, until it fell after World War I, there were also cities that had considered themselves “little Viennas” to the east – places like Czernowitz, whose people spoke German and maintained the values of earlier urban Hapsburg centers. Here I would like to acknowledge Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer’s remarkable book, Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish History.4 The Austrian Empire fell in 1918, and yet the Jewish community held onto the language and values of earlier times until World War II in Czernowitz, a city that had become part of Romania, then the USSR, then Ukraine. It paralleled in some ways the Muslims isolated in Skopje, ¨ sku¨p, taken over first in which they still called by its Turkish name, U 1912 by Serbia, then Bulgaria during the world wars, then Yugoslav Macedonia, and how they sought to maintain their religion, language, and dignity until most had to leave after World War II. The Muslims did not, however, suffer the horrors of the concentration camps that many Jews suffered. Still, they experienced starvation, labor camps, killing, and terror under the Bulgarian occupation. These were followed after the war by communist anti-religious dictates, and anti-Muslim and anti-Albanian policies that led to forced migrations.

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Refugees and forced migrants are often reduced to numbers of “people out of place,” a tendency that depoliticizes, dehistoricizes, and dehumanizes their plight.5 I want to bring to light the human experience of the forced migrants themselves, their children, and, where appropriate, memories of their grandchildren. How did they understand their experience, their adaptation to urban Turkey, and the loss of their Balkan homes? What organizational skills or experiences did they bring or develop that allowed them to survive and sometimes to succeed in their new urban home? This, then, is the second question after the question of identity over time. In researching migrants from the Balkans in Istanbul in 2004, I first discovered forty-three6 Balkan associations, or dernekler. These associations are civil society organizations, based on hometown affiliation, similar to earlier Jewish landsmanshaftn in the United States. In America they usually lasted only a few generations and helped with burials and initial social and financial concerns. But the Middle East is less known for civic organizations; it has more familybased networks or religious-based foundations known as vakıfs. Much work has been done on religion in migration studies,7 but much less on the place of Islam. This brings us to the related question of the role of Islam in the migrant organization. I will show how central it was in structural and cultural ways. Finally, there is the question of silence posed in the prologue. Why is so little known of the forced migrations of millions of Muslims from the Balkans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The question of silence is the third and final question of this study. One of the few exceptions to the general neglect of Balkan Muslim populations is the work of historian Justin McCarthy. He was the first Western scholar to bring out the scale of death and expulsions of Ottoman Muslims across the former Ottoman Empire. His Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821–1922 (1995) and The Ottoman People and the End of Empire (2001) are crucial for their demographics. He notes that from 1820 to 1920 approximately five million people from Ottoman lands were expelled or killed. His annotated map on “Forced Migration and Mortality in the Ottoman Empire” (2010) is a good summary of these expulsions over this century. As for the Balkans, the new nation states that took over former Ottoman lands had no positive interest in Muslim people left in their

INTRODUCTION

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territories. Indeed, Balkan politicians were in tune with general European practices of expelling minorities. Serbian politicians sought to get rid of Albanian Muslims in Kosova in 1938 by expelling them to Turkey, for which Turkey would be recompensed at a certain rate per family of ten. Similarly, Czech leader Edvard Benes in 1938 tried to get rid of 1.2 to 2 million Sudetendeutsche by having Hitler take them in return for 6,000 square kilometers of Czech territory.8 Neither of these bargains worked out due to the impending war. It is fair to say that the twentieth century was the heyday of forcible population transfers. This is thanks to the rise of the nation-state in place of multi-ethnic empires and the assumption that political and ethnographic boundaries of such nation-states should be identical.9 Most major wars of the twentieth century included expulsions of minorities. And despite the human rights abuses, there was international sanction for such expulsions as supposed ways of preventing future conflicts, despite the lack of any evidence to support this contention. International authorities looked to the Lausanne population transfers of 1923 as an unalloyed success. However, people who bothered to check for themselves came away with different perceptions. Mitrany’s analysis is worthy of note. He visited Greece in 1928 and wrote, “The suffering involved is beyond description and beyond condoning.”10 And he cited Commissioner Charles Eddy of the League Refugee Settlement, who noted that such a transfer could only work if the two countries were at peace. But such a transfer would not be needed if that were the case.11 More recent accounts, like Clark’s Twice a Stranger (2006)12 are valuable contributions that deeply question the supposed success of Lausanne. But at least with most major expulsions, we have heard of them. Even in Douglas’ recent book (2012) on the expulsion of 12 to 14 million Germans after World War II, where he makes the point that this largest expulsion in the twentieth century is not well known, he too omits the forced migrations of Muslims from former Ottoman lands. Some of the silence, though, is from Western scholars’ neglect of works by Turkish scholars. Here I point to sources by Bilal S¸ims¸ir, a Turkish diplomat and political scientist who compiled three volumes of documents whose title is in three languages: Rumeli’den Tu¨rk Go¨leri, c Emigrations Turques des Balkans, Turkish Emigrations from the Balkans, Belgeler, Documents.13

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It was while S¸ims¸ir was in the Turkish foreign service and posted in Paris that he found the first set of diplomatic documents related to expulsions of Muslims in the Balkans in the late nineteenth century.14 He later discovered other valuable documents in archives in London, Damascus, Vienna, Sofia, and, of course, Istanbul. The first volume focuses on the Russo-Turkish War and the years 1877–8 with documents in Turkish, English, and French. The second volume has Turkish, English, and French documents from 1879. And the third volume has Turkish, French, English, and Bulgarian documents from 1880–5. Those in Turkish are translated, as are the dates, for the convenience of researchers. He published the first volume in 1968, the second in 1970, and the third in 1988. It is not surprising that S¸ims¸ir himself was a migrant from the Balkans to Turkey; he was born in Bulgaria in 1933. Still, there are not a significant number of Turkish sources on Turkish migration from the Balkans to Turkey. The comparison with Greece – where there is a major center of oral history in Thessaloniki and a whole genre of literature of the dispossessed – is startling. Since 1995, however, after 70 to 80 years of silence across most of the twentieth century, Turkish historians have begun writing on the population transfer from the Balkans and the Muslim experience, especially on the mu¨badele: see Aghatabay, 2007; Arı, 1995; Aytas¸, 2007, ¨ zsoy, 2007; and Emgili, 2011; Kaplanog˘lu, 1999; Kurtulgan, 2010; O ¨Ozyu¨rek, 2007. The authors are often the children or grandchildren of people expelled from the Balkans. And there are memoirs that have been written by people forced out of places like Salonika (such as Berber, 2002 and Hatipler, 2003). A fine example of such a work of history is Go¨: c Osmanlı’dan Cumhuriyete Balkanlar’ın Makus Talihi, which translates as “Migration: The Perverse Fate of the People of the Balkans from Ottoman Times to the Republic [of Turkey].” It was published in 2001 for the first time and has since been republished seven times. It was written by H. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, an excellent scholar whose parents both came from the Balkans. A less well-known book, but one of importance for cultural knowledge ¨ sku¨p,15 which translates as “Our of life in the Balkans, is Arka Bahcemiz U Back Gardens of Skopje.” This was written by Hidayet Ilimsever, a migrant from Skopje who came as a child of nine to Istanbul, and historian

INTRODUCTION

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H. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu. Migration literature likes to give generation numbers to migrants depending on their age when they arrive in the new land. So a child who had come before the age of five would be considered a 1.75 generation, that is, almost like a second-generation person (2.0 generation), in that he or she would remember little of the home country and not have gone to school there. According to this, Hidayet Ilimsever would be termed a 1.5 generation in that she had come when she had had some schooling in her home country and could remember it. But why stop at childhood? When a migrant woman marries into the migrant community, this reinforces the culture, especially in cultures where the bride is expected to live with the parents of the groom. In Hidayet Ilimsever’s case, she did marry into the migrant community, but her husband died young after she had only had one child, a daughter, and so she returned to live with her widowed mother until she passed on. I see her knowledge of the culture of the homeland as extending far beyond that of people who came as teenagers, that is, of the 1.25 generation. And the work she engaged in to support her daughter was classic Turkish embroidery that was especially appreciated for Balkan daughters’ trousseaux. In fact, she was so knowledgeable that she wrote a book on the many particulars of the social life, customs, and language of the Turkish Skopje community that she had left at age nine, but learned about through her parents and the community in the Istanbul diaspora. Clearly migrant numerology has neglected the potential of ongoing influence of the community.

Framework of the Study and Methodology This book is divided into two parts. The first part, “Becoming a Minority in Our Post-Ottoman Hometown,” focuses on memories of experiences of Muslims in Skopje before many were forced out of their homes. It helps explain why they felt compelled to leave and what they brought with them.16 The second part, the essence of the book, “Taking the Plunge to a New Homeland,” focuses on the experiences of Muslim migrants in Istanbul and their migrant association over the years. Both parts begin with train trips. The first part begins with the Ottoman sultan’s last trip to the Balkans in 1911 when he took a train from Salonika to Skopje, on to Kosova, and back. Balkan migrants in

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Istanbul had grandparents who remembered the Sultan’s visit to Skopje. It presages the fall of the Ottomans and the destruction wrought by the ¨ sku¨p, as it Balkan Wars. I describe earlier historic Ottoman Skopje, or U was known in Turkish, and the central Turkish bazaar – the largest bazaar in the Balkans – and its guild system. But after the Balkan Wars, Muslims in Skopje had become a minority. Life stories of several families through these interwar years make clear the transition. What finally forced many of the Muslims of Skopje to leave were the Bulgarian occupation of World War II, followed by communism’s policies against Muslims, and its state terrorism. The second part begins with a re-enactment that has occurred for several years at Sirkeci train station in Istanbul, beginning in 2009, when people dressed as Balkan migrants from the early 1950s and arrived there by train. This section then presents the Imperial city of Istanbul and its eventual decline. I follow the early migrants from Skopje to Istanbul by train and the founding and growth of their association, first known by the name of the river that flows through Skopje. In 1967 they changed the name of their association to something much broader. There were major political coups in Turkey in 1970 and 1981 that the migrant association coped with. Throughout I give life histories of different members and trace the importance of music, poetry, and song. I trace the growing role of women and the importance of outreach, of providing new clothing to poor children in Istanbul each year and scholarships to those in need across Turkey. In learning about this remarkable community of Balkan migrants my timing was auspicious. Many of those who had come in the 1950s as young adults now wanted to talk about their lives when I arrived in the twenty-first century. In addition, for those who had been imprisoned and suffered traumatic experiences, it is documented that while they may cope well enough in young adulthood, as they age and begin to lose family members, they may experience their earlier trauma again.17 It helps to talk about the earlier times with those who care. Even if this were not the case, migrants are more reflective than most people because they always have a before and an after. I had learned this early in my extensive work with Muslim immigrants in Detroit. And many of the Balkan migrants in Istanbul came from families that had

INTRODUCTION

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experienced multiple forced migrations. Some were able to return briefly to Skopje to reflect again on what they had left and how their city and their lives had changed. Istanbul, too, changed from under them. My fluency in Turkish, Albanian, a colloquial Arabic, French, and some Macedonian made this study possible. I was accorded special respect due to my over 20 years of study with a highly respected Muslim leader from a Turkish and Albanian Sufi order in America.18 That I was a poor seamstress they decided to remedy by teaching me Turkish embroidery. I spent a full year interacting with members of migrant associations from Skopje and other central Balkan cities in Istanbul. I went to regular women’s meetings of the associations and participated in trips and activities, including an intensive Turkish embroidery class. With my head bent over the embroidery hoop I learned much. I would sit and talk with the men as well. I interviewed individuals in their homes with their permission. These I usually tape-recorded so I could listen more carefully. I went back to the Balkans on a trip with the Skopje group. But at the end of one year I realized it was not enough, so I stayed on in Istanbul for four more months to be there for a second month of Ramadan and to participate in the giving out of clothes to the urban poor. I attended many mevluds. This is classic ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted initially in Istanbul for 16 months. I also worked in the library of the main migrant association and with permission photocopied communications and five decades of bulletins from the earliest years onwards. I researched the main Istanbul newspapers to seek media coverage on migrants. I returned to Istanbul several years later to spend more time at the migrant center. This time it was almost entirely with older men. I participated in the regular singing with great pleasure. All told I spent 17 months in Istanbul. To do follow-up research in the Balkans where the migrants had come from, I went twice to Kosova, in 2009 and 2013, and three times to Skopje, in 2009, 2011, and 2014. I had studied in Kosova before and had even visited Skopje when it was still part of Yugoslavia. I needed to understand the geography of Skopje and its Turkish bazaar. I also wanted to understand how and why some Muslims had not gone to Turkey at times when many felt they had to leave. All told I spent 10 months in the Balkans.

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Why the Silence? One advantage of doing research in the country you are studying is that you can seek out local scholars, and so I sought out H. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu. I first met him at the Ottoman Archives through academic friends. His mother was from Skopje and his father was from the Sandjak, a region between Montenegro and Kosova. So both his parents, now deceased, were from the Balkans. His wife’s family was also from the Balkans. In the first weeks of my research in Istanbul he and his wife agreed to meet me in the oldest Balkan migrant association I had located, the one from Skopje that had been founded in 1950. It was my first trip of many to the Rumeli Turk Dernek center. I took the tramway to Fındıkzade and got off. I walked up a long block to a side street, but before I could find the door of the center, I found a crowd of mothers and children. It was Ramadan and the dernek was having its annual Ramadan Children’s Clothing Event in the wedding salon that they had rented across the street from the center. In Ramadan all children should have one set of new clothing, but this is especially difficult for poor children. So the Rumeli Dernek steps in. But to avoid having too many mothers show up at any one time, each mother brings a slip of paper from her neighborhood with the number of children, their ages, and the particular date, showing that they had qualified for the clothing according to the dernek’s branch in their area. Down in the wedding salon I saw jackets, coats, sweaters, shirts, dresses, skirts, pants, socks, and shoes – all organized by size, and all of them new. I spoke with some of the women who were running the event. “We give it to poor children no matter their religion or background.” “And we came here with one suitcase,” several added. “From one suitcase to all this,” I said. “That is true Ramazan” (a local term for Ramadan). They were pleased, as they should be. They asked why I was there. I told them that I was there to research life stories of Rumeli migrants. “You have come to the right place,” they said, “to the center.” I later learned that the three-day event provided clothing for up to some 3,000 children. The following year I would learn how the women of the dernek made the funds themselves to pay for the clothing and shoes that they gave out each Ramadan. Then I went across to the center. Yıldırım and his wife Melek arrived, and we went down to the basement level of the dernek, where it was

INTRODUCTION

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cooler and where there was a library. As I surveyed the books, Yıldırım Bey explained that from the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 until 1990 there had been almost no work on Balkan immigration to Turkey. He noted that there was a lot of work on the Balkan Wars – maybe 200 to 300 studies – but almost nothing on Balkan immigrants. I asked him why. Here was a man whose family had come from the Balkans and had himself broken the silence with his own well regarded book. Yıldırım Bey gave three reasons. I would hear the second and third again and again. But the first reason was rarely voiced. The first, mostly unspoken reason, was that for so many, leaving the Balkans was full of sorrow and death. Yıldırım gave two examples from his own family. His mother’s family lost 17 members in one night in a village outside Skopje during World War II. And his grandfather’s brother, who was the mayor of a town in the Sandjak, was taken by the Serbs after World War II and shot dead. His grandfather never recovered from the loss of his brother. Such loss was too hard to contemplate, so people lived in a way to wipe it out. In other words, people had suffered trauma they could only endure by pushing it aside. Yıldırım Bey then gave a second reason why people had not written on Balkan immigrants. The immigrants themselves needed to fit into the nationalist overlay that was Turkey. I remembered well that when I first went to Turkey in 1970 as a young student, it was a highly nationalistic country. People did not talk about the Ottoman past or other ethnic origins. All were “Turks.” I can only imagine this was even stronger when the Balkan migrants had come earlier. There was even a law passed in 1926, after a Kurdish uprising, that other groups, like Kurds, Circassians, and Albanians, would not be mentioned. All were “Turks.” The third reason that Yıldırım Bey gave, I knew from my work with immigrants in America, and I heard in Turkey as well. The first generation, all they did was work. They came with so little and were sometimes 15 to an apartment. They also had little education. The second generation had more, and got more schooling, but still they mostly had to work. They wanted to be part of Turkey. Then the third generation was the first to go to university and become well educated. They asked the question, “Who am I?” They wanted to know the past of their families. In this study of Balkan migrants and their coming to a new life in Turkey I will try to confirm or add to these understandings of the long

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silence. But that day, visiting for the first time the association of people who had come from around Skopje to Turkey, I had come up with another question. Did they always give to poor children from all over Istanbul? Most immigrant groups I knew only gave to their own. When and how did this group move beyond those bounds? And I found this was true with the scholarships, too. That is, they gave to students in economic need with high grades who had Balkan backgrounds, but they also gave to students from Turkey and beyond in economic need with high grades. Was there something in the experience of Muslims in the Balkans that made them more open to the needs of others when they came as migrants to Turkey? Or was there something in their experience in Turkey that promoted this? The more I learned about them, the more questions I had.

PART I BECOMING A MINORITY IN OUR POST-OTTOMAN HOMETOWN

In Honor of Our Elders Every year the women’s branch of the Rumeli Association in Istanbul holds a special gathering to honor their elders. This is an appropriate way to begin the first part of this book, since all the elders were born in the Balkan homeland. For important events it is always wise to arrive early. I arrived at the dernek, “the association,” in time to see people rushing around setting up chairs and flowers in the main room. This was only my second time at the women’s meeting. “Go downstairs,” I was told. Downstairs the library was a garden of fabric and soft colors, with silken nightgown ensembles even hanging out into the hallway. All the tables that filled the library room were covered with all manner of embroidery. There were elegant napkin sets, tablecloths, pillows for babies, silken cases for slippers, and special cases for groomswear. One woman even showed me a prayer rug she had embroidered with silver thread. The quality of the work was very fine and the colors of the silk threads most subtle. The back of each piece was as elegant as the front. Women continually pointed to the handwork by Hidayet Hanım, which indeed stood out. Much of the rest had been done by her students. There was a delicacy to the designs, but at the same time they seemed to flow. There were different styles, too. I was shown a soft green

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nightgown that had been made in Skopje by Hacer Abla. She had taken out the threads and made them into a sort of lace across the bodice. It was at least 60 years old. I took photographs but worried I did not have the light to capture the delicacy of the detail. I went back upstairs and met a woman who told me about older Istanbul. “It had been a city of manners and culture,” she said. “Now it is just a conglomeration where people have come without their culture, and they have not taken up that of Istanbul. It is like television.” Then she added that at night if she goes out, she puts her purse in a bag to look like something else. Before, they did not even lock their doors. There was no robbery. Her school was near and there were older homes where now there is a tramway. “Besiktas¸, an area of Istanbul, was beautiful,” she said. “All old homes.” Another woman came in. “Yes,” she confirmed. “But then the owners died and the children could not afford to fix up the old homes and the city wouldn’t help, so they came down. Apartment buildings went up in their stead where all the gardens used to be. Only along the Bosphorus the old homes stayed, but just inland they came down.” As I would later learn, when the migrants first came from the Balkans, Istanbul had been a city of less than two million people. But it had grown with migrants from eastern Anatolia, as well as from the Balkans, and from other parts of Turkey. Now it was a city of some 15 million, truly a megalopolis, so indeed there had been population pressures. The main room was starting to fill up. I was introduced to Hacer Abla. I tried to call her Hacer Hanım, since it was more respectful for her age. She looked to be in her seventies, but she was most erect and alert. “No,” she corrected me, “Hacer Abla.” Abla means “older sister.” She preferred that. Someone told me that she had been a star of the Turkish Theater in Skopje. Amazing! Muslim women of her generation would have had a most difficult time persuading family to be allowed to go onstage. She told me she had been nine months pregnant when her husband had been taken by the government in Skopje. “We could not even say the name ‘Atatu¨rk,’” she told me. “My husband had been a member of the Yu¨cel Tes¸kilati. He was executed,” she said simply. I looked over at the others, who nodded. And she had done the beautiful green embroidery. By then there were over 70 women present. We began with the Ya Sin Sura for the dead. They passed out prayer books in both Arabic

PART I

Figure 2

17

Hacer Abla and Hidayet Hanım at the gathering for elders

and modern Turkish. Then they passed out headscarves that were dark brown or dark purplish. The director asked an older woman to read the prayer. She had white hair, and she read the Arabic fluidly and well. Many followed in their books in Arabic. Then the director asked another woman to pray since she prayed so well. This, too, was an older woman. As soon as she started, it was clear she could pray. She prayed for those who had died – for the fathers and mothers, the fathers- and mothers-in-law, uncles, aunts, and special people, too, including the spirit of Atatu¨rk. Next to me Hacer Abla was crying. Her only daughter had died of cancer the previous year. She had two grandsons, one in New Orleans and the other in Istanbul. But she seemed so alone. I hugged her. The woman praying asked for mercy for us and for the soldiers. She moved in and out of cadence, and the prayer was most moving. Then we gave back the Ya Sin booklets and the headscarves. But the scarves are yours to keep, they told us. So they brought mine back to me. The director addressed us. “Today we honor our older people.” Hidayet Hanım added with a smile, “Not old, elder.” The director continued. “We know they lived through much difficulty and hardship. We are proud of

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them. We want them to know this and so every year we have this meeting.” Everyone applauded. “But we also honor Hidayet Hanım today and her teaching here.” Everyone applauded again, and Hidayet Hanım looked happy. They brought her a gift. It was a lovely orchid. She was touched. She said, “Today I am drunk with pleasure from the beauty of the handwork and the fact it is from my students.” She had a right to be proud. The younger women started bringing out napkins for all. Then there were plates of simit pogaca, the specialty of Skopje. It was warm and very good. There was tea for all that was passed around on trays with sugar. Then the various young women brought out rice on platters with yogurt and baba ghanoush, an eggplant dish, with bread, and even some stuffed peppers. It was all good. I started talking to the woman to my left. She was from Prishtina in Kosova, which is to the north of Macedonia. She had come in 1952 when

Figure 3

Purple tulips

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she was 16. She had been in school in Prishtina and had missed her school when she came to Istanbul. She said she had cried for two years. She had gone back once after the war, in 1999, but her family was all in Turkey. She had stayed in hotels and there had been American and German soldiers. No, she was here now. The woman to my right was from Skopje. I asked about the food. “Yes, U¨sku¨p” – the Turkish name for Skopje – “is famous for its food, for simit pogaca, for bo¨rek, and for its sweets.” Her daughter had made the bird’s nest baklava. They passed out the desserts. There were plates each including hot helva, tulumba, a bird’s nest baklava, and a small piece of melon. We washed our hands before we went to look at the embroidery again. What had the women brought from their Balkan hometowns? Delicious food, a well developed aesthetic sense and skill in embroidery and sewing, an urban lifestyle and appreciation for urban ways. They were knowledgeable of their religion and its prayers and practices, without resorting to a cleric. They had a strong sense of family and community relations where elders mattered and where women were active publically but largely separate from men. What had their lives been like in the Balkans, and how had it shaped them? With some background on the Sultan’s last train trip to Rumeli, to this I turn.

CHAPTER 1 THE SULTAN'S LAST VISIT TO RUMELI

In the summer and fall of 1908 there was rejoicing in the cities of the Ottoman Empire. Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II had agreed to reinstate the 1876 Constitution, and this was seen as a sign that the Ottoman Empire was finally coming together in ways that its many peoples with their varying religions and languages could not have imagined. In Salonika, the commercial center of Rumeli, Muslim hodjas, Christian Orthodox priests, and Jewish rabbis greeted each other and walked hand in hand in mutual harmony. Greeks, Bulgarians, Jews, Albanians, Armenians, and Turks fell into each other’s arms and called each other “Brother.” Bulgarian komitajis sat with Turkish army officers and drank coffee together.1 In the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire, while the leaders were Muslims, other religious communities had been allowed to practice their faith and govern themselves to a certain extent with their own leaders within the millet system. As the empire declined in power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were attempts at reform, first military, and then political. A major attempt at reform was the 1876 Constitution, largely written by Midhat Pasha, who was a leader in the Ottoman region of Bulgaria. It did not effectively limit the power of the Sultan, but it did proclaim the equality of all peoples of the Ottoman State, no matter their religion, and their right to serve in the Chamber of Deputies. It only lasted until 1878.

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Terrorism across Macedonia and Abdu¨lhamid II To appreciate the return of the Constitution in 1908, you need to know that for the previous 20 years there had been seething across Ottoman Macedonia, with separatist groups of Greek andartes, armed by the Greek government in Athens, who attacked Turkish villages in Macedonia, and Bulgarian komitajis who raided Ottoman posts throughout the region. In 1903 agents of IMRO, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which sought independence for Bulgaria, had actually bombed the Ottoman Bank in Salonika by tunneling from a grocery store across the street from the bank. Rumeli, the Ottoman lands in the Balkans, had been destabilized by the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8. Besides the battles, Russians and Cossacks had armed local Bulgarians against their Muslim neighbors. Before that Bulgaria had been one of the better administered of the Ottoman provinces. But the mass killings and the sea of refugees initiated by the 1877 Russian invasion had permanently changed the region. To the west, Muslims had also been killed and expelled as Serbia expanded southwards. Within the Ottoman Empire there had been growing opposition to the autocratic rule of Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II. It had begun with students from the Imperial Medical School in 1887 who had founded Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, “the Society for Union and Progress.” During the long rule of Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II, this opposition brewed, both among graduates from the new academies that the Sultan had founded and in the exile community in France. These, combined with nationalist groups of Greeks and Armenians, opposed the Sultan’s policies. In recent years scholars have reevaluated Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II, for in all fairness he had a host of problems and powers arrayed against him when he came to power in 1876. The interest on the Ottoman Empire’s bonded debt in 1878 was 44 percent of the budget before the subsequent war.2 He saw himself as a reformer, and his first reform was of the Ministry of Finance. After initiating an effective Commission on the Debt, Abdu¨lhamid established professional schools whose graduates the bureaucracy could then draw on. He expanded railroads and the telegraph service. He fostered agriculture and trade and worked to modernize the military, although it remained relatively weak. In international affairs Abdu¨lhamid knew he had no one he could count on among the Great Powers to support him, despite previous

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treaties. Soon after the Russo-Turkish War, the French had taken Tunisia, the British Egypt. And the Great Powers continued to interfere in Ottoman internal affairs on the grounds that they were protecting Christians within the empire. The Europeans also ran their own postal systems within the Ottoman Empire. From his side, Abdu¨lhamid had an extensive system of spies and censorship. The Sultan became more suspicious through the years. He also had challenges from groups within his own empire. Apart from the Greek and Armenian nationalists, Albanians grew worried about losing more lands in the Balkans to their Christian neighbors. Overall, those opposed to Abdu¨lhamid wanted more participation in the government, less top-down rule. It came to a head when Ottoman Army officers participated in the opposition. This began in 1906 in Salonika, which had sufficient distance from Istanbul and the spies of the Sultan. The following year the harvest was not good and taxes were late, so pay and promotions were held up. There were more terrorist attacks in Macedonia which the Third Army there had to deal with. The Committee for Union and Progress in Salonika held meetings that called for restitution of the short-lived 1876 constitution and parliament so that all could work for the good of the empire. In the spring of 1908 the Sultan sent agents to Macedonia to find out what was going on. One was shot. Abdu¨lhamid sent a full commission that discovered that some of the Ottoman Army were members of the Committee of Union and Progress. Among those discovered by the Sultan’s agents was Major Mehmet Niyazi Bey, an Ottoman Army officer and an Albanian from Macedonia who was indeed a member of the Committee of Union and Progress. Major Niyazi then fled and told people to pay their taxes to him until the Constitution was restored. Other troops were sent from Istanbul, but they ended up joining the rebels in Monastir. There were uprisings in Monastir, U¨sku¨p (Skopje), and Ferizaj, and in other towns as well. On 10 July 1908 they called for restitution of the Constitution. At this time, the Sultan realized that things had changed, and since it had been under him that the Constitution had first been promulgated in 1876, he stated that it had merely been suspended. On 27 July 1908, in a step to undercut the rebels, the Constitution was formally reinstated. In Istanbul crowds were ecstatic and roamed cheering and greeting people of different faiths in openness and joy.3 But just at this time,

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outside powers struck against the vulnerable Ottomans. In October Austria– Hungary annexed Bosnia –Hercegovina, thereby violating the provisions of the Congress of Berlin of 1878. This was just the moment when the Ottomans needed support for their fledging democratic government and peoples. Then Bulgaria followed suit by declaring its full independence and seizing a part of the Eastern Rumelian Railway. This hurt the Ottoman regime financially, for Bulgaria had been paying tribute since the Treaty of Berlin; it also hurt the prestige of the new system that had hoped to keep the empire whole. In addition, and also in violation of the Congress of Berlin, Cretan deputies declared union with Greece. In this short time, the new government had lost more territory than Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II had been forced to give up since 1882.4 Nevertheless, the members of parliament were elected and met, but they merely exacerbated divisions. Meanwhile, a counter-revolution was brewing with Islamist roots in the capital city of Istanbul, where the Committee of Union and Progress had never been strong. In April 1909 the counter-revolution took over, and it looked as if the Sultan was back in control. But the Ottoman Third Army in Salonika rallied and marched to Istanbul, where they took back power. This time they deposed the Sultan and sent him and his family by ship to exile at the Villa Allatini, the private summer home of a Jewish family on the outskirts of Salonika. There he lived quietly for the next few years.

The Young Turks and Planning for Sultan Res¸ad’s Trip Those who took power in Istanbul became known as “the Young Turks.” They ruled as a constitutional democracy. They declared a brother of Abdu¨lhamid as the sultan, but deeply curtailed his power. They continued reforms of the judiciary that Abdu¨lhamid had begun. With their military interests they especially worked at modernizing the military, and finally they electrified the Istanbul trams. They also had to cope with Armenian Dashnak terrorist attacks in eastern Anatolia and Greek terrorism in Macedonia. Idealistically, they asserted equal rights and responsibilities for all citizens. But they soon found that many Christians in the empire did not want to serve in the military; they preferred the old ways of exemptions

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and paid substitutions where only Muslims served. The Young Turks then tried a policy of “Ottomanization” to encourage the commonality of all and promote a shared Ottoman identity rather than separate religious and ethnic identities. This, too, was not appreciated, and so they became more heavy-handed in their policies. In addition, there were Albanian revolts in western Rumeli in response to some of the new reforms requiring taxes and military service from all citizens. The Catholic mountain Albanians had generally avoided both of these. Muslim Albanians in Kosova joined their countrymen, but still the rebellion was put down harshly. Yet to have Albanians rebelling was most troubling to the Young Turks. Most Albanians were Muslims and many had served the Ottoman Empire most loyally as regular soldiers, palace guards, judges, and even grand viziers throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule. But since the nineteenth century, Albanian lands in the west and central Balkans were highly vulnerable to Greek, Montenegrin, and Serbian expansion. Administratively these lands were split among four different Ottoman vilayets, or provinces; the Albanians wanted to be in one administrative unit within the Ottoman Empire to be stronger against their Christian neighbors. The Ottomans seemed unaware of the danger. In 1910 the Young Turk leaders began to plan a trip for the new sultan the next year to Rumeli, largely to reach out to the Albanians and try to quell their uprisings. The new sultan, Abdu¨lhamid’s brother, had become Mehmed V Res¸ad, or Sultan Res¸ad. When he came to the throne in 1909 he was in his mid-sixties, and he had traveled very little since becoming sultan. He had only visited Bursa and Edirne – Ottoman cities that were close to Istanbul. Before that he had spent over 30 years in virtual palace imprisonment while his brother was in power. For nine of those years he had been in solitary confinement, where it was reported he wrote Persian poetry. Sultan Res¸ad knew little about the complex politics in which the Ottoman Empire found itself. On his first trip outside the palace he was reportedly amazed at all the changes in the city of Istanbul. And the new sultan did not like uniforms. But in preparation for his trip, the head Court Chamberlain told him that since he was also the Commander-in-Chief, the Albanians would expect him to wear a uniform on his travels in the Balkans.5 He wore uniforms.

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It took several months to plan for the three-week-long trip. The Sultan and his entourage, including two of his sons, would leave Istanbul by ship and travel to Salonika. From there he would travel north by train to U¨sku¨p (Skopje), and then on to Prishtina. From Prishtina he would pray at the battlefield of Kosovo where the early Ottoman Sultan Murad, one of the conquerors of Rumeli, had been martyred in 1389. This should be especially pleasing to the Albanians, who were the majority in Kosova. Then he would return by train from Prishtina to Salonika and by another train to Monastir, where he would visit the military academy there, also a center of the Third Ottoman Army. He would return to Salonika, and then go by ship back to Istanbul. In different cities he would have audiences with local dignitaries as well as with delegations from cities that he would not be able to visit on his journey. Broadly, by bringing the new sultan to Rumeli the Young Turk regime was trying to recapture the goodwill and confidence of the people that they had had in 1908, but that they had lost in the interval with the territorial losses and policies of Ottomanization. Not only was the Sultan the padishah, he was also the caliph – the supreme leader of the Muslim world. So to have him travel through the cities of Macedonia and Kosova, the cities and lands of central Rumeli, the Young Turks hoped to increase the influence and esteem of the regime among the people there, to encourage the ties of different elements of Macedonia’s people with the government and the padishah, and to bring the Albanians into obedience.6 With the Albanians the regime was especially counting on the influence of the status of the Sultan as caliph, or head of all Muslims. In describing the last Ottoman sultan’s journey in Rumeli, I draw extensively on a Turkish book by Mevlu¨t C¸elebi7 that is based on articles from multiple Turkish newspapers of the time from Istanbul and Rumeli, as well as other references to this trip in accounts and histories of the time. C¸elebi is a traditional historian, but he also includes one example of oral history in his book, which he collected from an eyewitness years later in Izmir, and which I include at the end of this account. In addition, Leon Sciaky, in his memoir Farewell Salonika (1946), includes the following cautionary framing of the summer of the Sultan’s visit by Yaco, his Sephardic Jewish family’s grain warehouse manager, who was illiterate but highly knowledgeable.

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“Don’t you know, Master,” said Yaco, “that when kings travel about, it brings unhappiness and war?”8 Truly, within 16 months of the Sultan’s visit the whole region would be enveloped in the First Balkan War.

The Sultan Visits Salonika: Commercial Center of Rumeli On 5 June 1911, Sultan Res¸ad prepared to leave Dolmabahce Palace on the Bosphorus. The palace was full of people who had come to wish him well on his journey. Princes, ambassadors, ministers, deputies, and military officers were all arranged in two lines in the palace salon, and the Padishah took his leave of them, one by one. A prayer was read. The Padishah responded by thanking all for the honor they had bestowed on him and entrusting them to Cenab-i Hakk, “the Majesty of Truth,” a Persian-based term for God that reflected his poetic and Sufi background. He then boarded the boat that took him to the battleship Hayreddin Barbaros.9 It was only appropriate that the Sultan’s battleship be named for the greatest Ottoman admiral, Hayreddin Barbaros Pasha, who with his three brothers had captured Algiers from the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. Besides capturing innumerable ships across the Mediterranean, Hayreddin Barbaros Pasha had also brought thousands of persecuted Muslims to safety, from Christian Spain to North Africa. The cities in Rumeli had been preparing for months for the visit of their padishah. Salonika, as the main commercial center of Macedonia, had outdone itself. The municipality and different organizations, including the Committee for Union and Progress, the New Jewish Club, the Greek Society, and the Jewish Society, among others, had constructed and decorated 20 triumphal arches10 across the main avenues of Salonika through which the carriage of the Padishah would pass. Everywhere there were red and white flags, and candles of red and white, as the national colors, with some of the triumphal arches lit with as many as 700 candles. Delegations had come to honor the Sultan: 200 people from Monastir, ¨ sku¨p, and 190 people from Izmir in Anatolia. 150 people from U Bosnia– Hercegovina sent a group of 90 specially garbed people to welcome him to Salonika. And the headlines in the main newspaper, Rumeli, read, “Our Padishah is coming!”

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The Barbaros arrived in the Salonika harbor on 7 June 1911, but the Sultan spent the day and night onboard the ship. That night there were fireworks in the harbor that lit up the city. Meanwhile, several ministers from the Sultan’s entourage went quietly to visit the former sultan, Abdu¨lhamid II, who lived in exile outside Salonika, to ask if he had any needs. Despite the lights and candles, people also spoke of the continuing rain and the mud throughout the city. The municipality had even strewn sand among the rough cobblestones to make the carriage ride of the sultan smoother,11 and this mixed with the mud. The next day the Sultan, dressed in an admiral’s uniform, received a 21-gun salute from the harbor as he stepped ashore. The mufti, the stateappointed Muslim leader of the city, read a prayer, and schoolchildren and soldiers bowed in respect. On the broad pier there were valuable carpets spread out for the Sultan. As he walked the ten meters toward the awaiting carriage, bands played the royal march. And as he left the pier, two animals were sacrificed for his arrival. When the carriage with the Sultan went forward, people on both sides of the avenue called out, “Long life to our Padishah!” During the long cortege, 200 schoolchildren from the different schools performed, and a band from the Israelite Alliance played. It is interesting to note that of all Ottoman cities, Salonika was the only one to have a Jewish majority, most of whose ancestors had come centuries earlier from Spain and Portugal. The Ottoman sultans had invited Sephardic Jews from the Iberian peninsula in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to settle in Ottoman lands after they had been expelled by Christian rulers there.12 Salonika, but also Monastir, U¨sku¨p, and Sarajevo, had Sephardic Jewish populations. Some in the Jewish community in Salonika had become especially prosperous through contracts to supply the uniforms for the Ottoman military and as grain suppliers from the interior of Rumeli. But there were Jews in all classes of society in the city. The Padishah received the many delegations who had gathered ¨ sku¨p, Bursa, Edirne, for him – from Trabzon, Yanina, Shkodra, U Erzurum, and Izmir. In the main Rumeli newspaper, there was an article entitled, “Rumeli will be forever Ottoman.” But by the end of the following year, 1912, the Ottomans would have lost most of their lands in the Balkans.

THE SULTAN'S LAST VISIT

Figure 4 1911

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29

Sultan Res¸ad stepping into the carriage after prayer in Salonika,

The next day, which was a Friday, the Padishah received Ottoman Army Major Niyazi Bey of Resne. Next the Sultan went to the Ayasofya Mosque to pray. In the afternoon he visited the exhibit that the women of the city had organized to raise funds for local charities. He walked on some rugs to increase their value for them. The following day the Sultan visited the army barracks that were located beyond the main square with the freedom monument. That evening he went to the Mevlevihane to watch a sema, the special zikir, or ceremony of remembrance and praise of God, of the Mevlevi dervishes. The Mevlevi Order had a special position in Salonika, and indeed they were close to his Majesty’s heart since he had long been a member of the Mevlevi Order.13 According to the great seventeenth-century traveler Evliya C¸elebi, the Mevlevihane in Salonika had a dome and paintings of special beauty. And within the city of Salonika, the Mevlevis had particular prestige. They received funds from salt mines to the west of the city that allowed them to support learning and study. During his stay in Salonika, His Majesty gave many gifts to worthwhile causes, schools and Sufi centers, and people. These gifts included: 300 lira to the municipal hospital, 200 lira to the artisanal or vocational school, 75 lira to the Jewish Sefakat Club, 50 lira to the

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Bulgarian Club, 30 lira to the Pine Constitutional Club Society, and 75 lira to the Greek orphanage, as well as gold watches and rings to individuals.

¨ sku¨p (Skopje): Central City of Rumeli The Sultan Visits U On 11 June 1911, after three full days in Salonika, the Sultan departed on the 8:20 morning train for U¨sku¨p with his two sons, three viziers, and leaders from Monastir, Ipek, Kosova, and other pashas. Students, soldiers, and civil servants gathered to bid him farewell. The newspapers remarked on the success of his visit for their city of Salonika. They noted the variety of garb of the different delegations that had come to have audience with him. And they noted the wholehearted participation of non-Muslim citizens of Salonika in receiving the Padishah, including the priests and rabbis.14 ¨ sku¨p made preparations for the As with Salonika, so, too, had U arrival of the Padishah. The high school was specially decorated for the occasion. Arches were constructed at different places in the city in his honor. Fully 5,000 Albanians had come to the city to meet the Padishah. And just as there were security measures taken in Salonika, these were taken in U¨sku¨p as well, and along the path of the Sultan’s train. There was a special train for the Padishah with two locomotives and several cars for his entourage that preceded his own car. There were two stops along the way. At Gevgili (Gevgelija), the train station was beautifully decorated, and at Ko¨pru¨lu¨ (Veles), the Padishah was also met with enthusiasm. ¨ sku¨p. He was It was toward evening when the Padishah arrived in U met by many at the station, including members of the government, military officers, consuls, religious leaders, Mevlevi sheykhs, students, and thousands of people. Lines and lines of Albanians greeted the Padishah with drums and zurna (reed instruments) and national dances. They shouted, “Long life to Your Majesty our Padishah.” Turks, Serbs, Vlachs, Rums, Jews, and Macedonians took part. ¨ sku¨p you Macedonian girls sang out in Turkish in march rhythm: “To U brought delight; Sultan Res¸ad, may you have long life.” The crowd headed toward the secondary school that had been decorated and from whose balcony the Sultan spoke. Next to him on the balcony was a

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religious leader from eastern Anatolia, known as Bediuzzaman, who accompanied him throughout his journey in Rumeli and who later became known as Said Nursi.15 Thousands of people of the city greeted him and his entourage. That night in the garden of the official residence they all spoke together. From the large gathering, at the Padishah’s order, five boys and five girls were brought forward. He gave the boys money and the girls diamond pins, and said, “Always get along this way like brothers and sisters. May it so continue. My duty is that of a father, without making any division.” Then the Padishah went out on the balcony and the people showed their approval. The vizier Ibrahim Hakki Pasha gave a short speech, and the celebration went on well into the night. The next day, the Padishah received the delegations that had come to U¨sku¨p. These included Kosovar representatives, notables, ministers, religious leaders, delegations from the Committee of Union and Progress, commercial society members, consultants, and those seeking connections for U¨sku¨p. He spoke with the representatives from Kosova, explaining how he had come to see his nation, and that it was all one body. He stated that his goal was that the various components and the Albanians all belonged to an essential entente. And he especially thanked the Committee for Union and Progress. After the reception, Albanians from Prishtina and Vuc
itern in Kosova performed dances in a special courtyard for the Padishah, which pleased him. He gave out gifts of lira. The Padishah also went to the mosque on this day and was greeted by the people, including students and soldiers, who filled the way. The Padishah passed by the Stone Bridge, the shops of the slippermakers, and the Vardar, where people wished him long life all along the way. After performing prayers, the mufti read a prayer. The Padishah returned to his residence for a rest. All matters with the Albanians were not solved, however. In particular, Albanians still sought roads, schools, the return of weapons that had been seized, and restitution for homes that had been destroyed. But except for a few Albanian notables who applied for pardons and received them, they did not submit these requests. Also on 13 June, the Padishah visited the Mevlevihane in ¨ sku¨p. The Mevlevihane had been constructed in 1650 near the U Bitpazar, and it had been expanded several times since, including

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during the time of Abdu¨lhamid II.16 The Padishah gave 200 lira to the Mevlevihane. ¨ sku¨p the gifts were much more valuable It is interesting that in U than those given out in Salonika. U¨sku¨p had been made the capital of the vilayet of Kosova in 1888, and by the gifts alone it was clear that it ¨ sku¨p that the Sultan had come to make his mark and bring was in U Albanians into the Ottoman sphere more surely. When he visited the Sultan Murat Mosque there, for example, he donated 5,000 lira to several academic societies. He gave 300 lira to the artisanal or vocational school and 500 lira to other schools. He gave 500 lira for the school and provisions for the poor, and 300 lira to the hospital for the destitute. Most prominently, he gave 30,000 lira for settling blood feuds, a sum that was clearly destined for the Albanian clans.

The Sultan Visits Kosovo: Battlefield of Sultan Murat After three days in U¨sku¨p, the Sultan left by train for Prishtina on 15 June 1911. As the train passed Kac
anik, the famous pass into southern Kosova, people by the side of the railway prayed. And by Ferizaj, there was a remarkable assemblage of people from the nearby cities of Prizren, Kalkandelen, Gostivar, and Luma who had all gathered to greet him and wish him well on his journey. At the Prishtina station, there was a crowd, and there were also locomotives that had been decorated with flowers. And as in Salonika, non-Muslims joined in the greeting of the Sultan. On his arrival, a choir from the Serbian seminary in Prizren serenaded him in Turkish. The Serbian vice-consul also gathered Serbs to be present to greet him.17 The train station was somewhat distant from the city. There were deputies, pashas, students, soldiers, and thousands of people who lined the 12-kilometer way to the city. The Padishah noticed that there was a man who did not look well who was carried on the shoulders of another. “Is the man on your shoulders ill?” asked the Padishah. “Yes, Padishah, my father just wants to see you and he will be well,” answered the man. The crowds did not diminish as evening came. There were processions for the Padishah of students, dervishes, and guild members all carrying banners of their associations. And when the Padishah came out onto the balcony of the government building at the top of the Divan Yolu,

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the road to the imperial council, in Prishtina, the crowds called in one voice, “Long life to our Padishah.” While people in Istanbul were used to seeing the sultan at a distance for Friday prayer, this was very different for the people of Rumeli, ¨ sku¨p and Prishtina. For them his coming to their especially those of U lands brought a special happiness. And indeed he responded in kind. Ottoman officials had of course visited before, and many of the greeting ceremonies came from such visits. But the sultan himself, who was also the caliph, was far above Ottoman officials. As for gifts, Sultan Res¸ad gave 200 lira to the poor of Prishina, and especially gifts for schools: 200 lira to the schools of Prishtina, 100 lira for the repair of two schools, and 200 lira for the construction of a school and a religious school in a suburb of Prishtina. He also gave 100 lira each for the poor of Senice, Prizren, and Yakova, and 500 lira for the repair and upkeep of the medrese, the religious school, as well as gifts to individuals including leaders of non-Muslim communities.18 Still, the main reason for journeying to Prishtina at this time was to visit the 1389 battlefield of Kosovo and the mausoleum of Sultan Murat. The mausoleum has a 700-year-old mulberry tree and has long been considered sacred to Albanians. When I lived in Kosova in the late 1980s, an Albanian family sacrificed a rooster on the tomb of Sultan Murat the day of the circumcision of their youngest son to help take away the pain. On Friday, 16 June 1911, the Padishah and his entourage went by carriages to the high plain of the battlefield of Kosovo where Sultan Murat had been martyred over five centuries earlier. There was a pavilion that had been prepared for the Padishah where he could rest once he arrived, for carriage rides over the poor roads and the high plain of Kosovo were brutal. After a brief meal and an hour’s rest, they went for Friday noon prayer. There was a place for washing before the prayer. A mihrab had been built to indicate the direction to Mecca, so people could align themselves for prayer, along with a pulpit of 20 steps’ height. The call to prayer began across the high plain to call the faithful. It was reportedly most moving as it echoed over the vast plain, followed by total silence. The gathered people all said their prayers, bowing down and repeating in unison. The accounts of the day differ in how many people were present. Many cite 200,000 and some 300,000, while others cite

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as low as 10,000. The photographs of the event do show an immense crowd. Ismail Hakki Efendi of Monastir took the pulpit, where he began his sermon with, “All believers are brothers.” There was more prayer by the multitude, and the wind blew. But overall the only sound was the chanting of the holy Qur’an. After the prayers, the vizier Ibrahim Hakki Pasha began his declaration on behalf of the Padishah. Couched in elegant Turkish, he brought out that some Albanians in the past year had made some unwise decisions. He was referring to the Albanian uprising of 1910. The Padishah was willing to issue a general pardon for this. Similarly, the Padishah wanted to see the end of honor killings, and to assist this he was contributing a significant sum of funds. With these policies there would be a new beginning. Again in much fine language, he warned the Albanians against being swayed by false claims, and rather to stay with Allah, the sheriat, and the law. At this point he announced that the amount of funds for stopping blood killings was 30,000 lira, truly a significant amount. “Let this land be a pearl of a land,” he exhorted. The people responded with, “Long life to our Padishah” and “Amin” throughout the sermon and declaration. However, there was a problem

Figure 5 1911

Thousands praying with the Sultan on the battlefield of Kosovo,

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in that both the sermon and the Vizier’s declaration were in Turkish. While some people understood Turkish, many Albanians did not. The idea had been for at least the first speaker from Monastir to speak in Albanian, but unfortunately he did not know the language. Later, when the Padishah returned to Salonika, both the sermon and the declaration were translated into Albanian and distributed, but the immediacy had been lost. On the battlefield there were memorable delegations that processed before the Sultan. These included 1,600 people from Gjilan to the south in Kosova, led by a group with a flag from the Russo-Turkish War of 1877. The Padishah and his entourage returned to Prishtina, where they had one more ceremony for the day. The Padishah had the idea of founding a new medrese, a higher religious college, “the Res¸adiye,” in Prishtina. This was in tune with his emphasis on schooling in Prishtina and people were most excited about the prospect. The Padishah would fund this from his own wealth with 20,000 gold lira. In Prishtina on 16 June 1911, Sultan Res¸ad laid a cornerstone for the proposed religious college, although the project would take a fair amount of planning.

The Sultan Visits Monastir and Returns to Istanbul The Padishah and his entourage returned to Salonika by train from Prishtina on 17 June. The following day was a day of rest for the Sultan in Salonika. On 19 June he had a reception with a Serbian delegation. Also on 19 June, the princes and other officials went to the municipal hospital for a reception in Salonika. That same day in the evening, the Vizier and several deputies visited the New Jewish Club. There the Chief Rabbi spoke on the close ties of the Jewish community with the state, and with the Committee for Union and Progress. And Sam Levi of the Journal de Salonique presented the Sultan with an album in Ottoman Turkish and French of his visit to Salonika. The Sultan set off for Monastir on 20 June 1911 by train from Salonika. It was very hot, and they added a ventilator to the Sultan’s train car. Along the way small towns had decorated their train stations for the passage of their padishah. At the Florina station he was formally greeted

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by people bowing on both sides, an animal was sacrificed, and there were speeches. At last he approached Monastir. As with Salonika and U¨sku¨p, Monastir, too, had prepared for the visit of the Sultan. People there had constructed arches over the streets and over the river. Bridges had been repaired and an artificial cascade constructed. At the train station in Monastir there were deputies, consuls, officials, delegations, soldiers, officers, religious leaders, guild members, notables, and representatives of the press. The Sultan was greeted as being a sultan who liked the Constitution, and the Sultan responded most graciously, according to press reports. Monastir had been the starting place of the return of the Constitution, and they were not going to let him forget it. That evening soldiers made a torchlight procession through the streets of the city. The next day the city had a ceremony commemorating the day when ¨ sku¨p had declared the Constitution and had Monastir, Resne, and U telegraphed Sultan Abdu¨lhamid II demanding official restitution of it. Crowds cheered as the Sultan watched the proceedings from the window of the governmental residence. First came processions of the Sixth Corps and its commander, and the seventeenth division of the regular army and its commander. Then Niyazi Bey and Eyu¨b Sabri Bey, with the same field glasses, weapons, and uniforms from their fateful days in 1908, passed by on horseback. The first speeches began, cannons were fired, and the banner of the Committee for Union and Progress was unfurled. It was as if they were reliving the original “Tenth of July” from three years ago. After the carriage of the Committee for Union and Progress passed by, the ulema of Monastir, the sheykhs, the government ministers, members of the guilds, and notables processed. Those of the music school and its students performed and passed by. There were marches and songs of freedom. A young director from the pedagogy school declaimed in military fashion the “March of Unity.” More groups of students from the different schools passed in procession, with the girls in red and white short jackets and all with flags. Bulgarians, Vlachs, Serbs, and Jews were all in unison in their processing. The handsome young people sang beautiful songs in Turkish. Heads of tekkes passed by. The Sultan, in the window, let it be known through his gestures how pleased he was with the prayers of all and the

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proceedings. People from Dibra, Ohrid, Resne, and different clans dressed in their distinctive garb passed by the place of the Sultan. Hodjas and priests, hand in hand, walked together. The whole ceremony lasted two hours. Then, in the afternoon, the Padishah received delegations. In the evening, there were again torchlight events, and groups of students came to the Sultan’s residence. On 22 June, since it was the date of the coronation of King George V of Great Britain, the Padishah sent a congratulatory telegram to him, as well as to the British consulate in Monastir. Clearly, the Padishah’s staff was working. The next day the Sultan went to Friday prayers at the Ishakiye Mosque in Monastir. After being congratulated on the military, Ubeydullah Efendi noted that the forebears of the Sultan had been great gazis, that is, warriors for the faith. But the Sultan responded that he was not inclined toward a war against the infidels. Rather, he saw this period as one of peace and improvement. After prayers, the Sultan visited the army commander. There he was presented to the commander, other commanders, and the officers, and he signed their official book with his full titles. As for gifts in Monastir, the Sultan gave 100 lira each for the poor of Serfice, Korca, Dibra, and Elbasan, as well as 400 lira for the poor of Monastir. He gave 150 lira to the infirmary of Monastir, 250 to the artisan school, and 75 lira each to the Greek and Bulgarian hospitals. He gave 75 lira to the medreses, 200 lira to the Sufi tekkes, and 500 lira to the Monastir schools. And he gave out the usual personal gifts to individuals, both Muslim and non-Muslim, including a coin collection to the corps commander. In Monastir the Padishah and his entourage were also given gifts. The well-known craftsman Dimitri made a writing table for the Sultan. The table had a silver ornamental border in which the following inscription was written: “This is presented on the occasion of the glorious event of the imperial journey to Rumeli in gratitude from the humble people of Monastir.” The Padishah was also given a sword that was several centuries old, as well as the first coat-of-arms of the Monastir Society of Union and Progress. On the morning of 24 June 2011, the Padishah left Monastir for Salonika. There were deputies, officers, ministers, soldiers, students, and other people gathered to send him off on his journey back. As the train

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passed along the track, it stopped a few minutes at the important stations of Florina and Vodina, but no one descended. There was a greeting ceremony prepared in Salonika, but the Padishah continued directly from the station to the harbor. There two lines of soldiers were in formation, along with the governor, the corps commander, the commandant, the inspector, the general staff, religious leaders, consuls, deputies, the mayor and municipal members, and members of the delegation for Union and Progress, who waited to wish the Padishah farewell. The Padishah thanked them for their good wishes and told them he left with most fond memories. As the Sultan boarded the Barbaros from the smaller boat, the cannon sounded and the people applauded. The Padishah’s flag was unfurled on the ship as it left Salonika for Istanbul. When the Padishah approached the city of Istanbul, there were ¨ sku¨dar, on the Asian side of Istanbul, and at crowds waiting for him at U Sarayburnu, by the old city on the European side, to welcome him back. The Sultan waved a black handkerchief to the crowds, who called back to him, “We wish you long life!” There was march music played, and schoolchildren and others gathered to welcome him home. When he arrived near Dolmabahc
e Palace there was much excitement. There were many there to greet his return, including princes, officials, and ambassadors in the upper salon, along with religious leaders, mayors, notables, scholars, and representatives from the ministers of finance and justice, and members of the press below. When the Padishah descended, an animal was sacrificed and prayers read aloud. Around the palace there were crowds who stayed until the evening and sweet-sellers and all manner of events.

Wherever the Sultan Put His Feet – The Balkan Wars The Sultan had left Istanbul on 5 June, and he had returned safely on 26 June 1911. By all accounts, including the Sultan’s own, it had been a positive experience19 – so much so that he planned a future trip beginning in Izmir to Beirut, Damascus, and Aleppo, and then on to Mecca. However, future events made this impossible. As for dealing with the Albanian uprisings and containing them, despite most events having been planned with this in mind, the Young Turks were not satisfied that this had been taken care of. Nevertheless,

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wherever the Padishah had gone, there had indeed been great love shown him. Turks, Albanians, and other peoples of the empire had all participated in this.20 And this continued after the Padishah returned to Istanbul through delegations and telegrams from Rumeli.21 C¸elebi closes his account of the Sultan’s journey to Rumeli, drawn from many Ottoman newspapers of the times, by saying that it was indeed the last time evlad-i fatihan, that is, “a child of the conqueror,” (ignoring the Arabic plural) visited Rumeli. By this he means that it was the last time an Ottoman sultan traveled there. But Muslims in Rumeli considered themselves as evlad-i fatihan, as “children of the conqueror.” The one eyewitness account in C¸elebi’s book is from a woman he found in Izmir who had been a first grader when the Sultan visited Monastir. She described the visit of the Sultan as follows: The whole city became a city of lights in the evening and a city of flags in daytime for the Sultan’s visit. It had a holiday spirit [. . .]. We were taken to see the Sultan. We children were dressed in white with red sashes from our shoulders to our waists, on which were written “Freedom, Justice, Equality.” As we walked toward the station, the Sultan’s carriage passed us by. The Sultan was waving with his hands in white gloves. He had a white beard, and a loving countenance that came across like a grandfather to us. This much I remember. But later when we were invaded, women said, Wherever he put his foot, it was so unlucky, everywhere he visited, all those places the enemy took, it should never have happened.22 So let us look to see if that is true. Several months after the Sultan’s return, Italy invaded Ottoman Libya, and although the Ottomans fought back and held the Italians to the coastal regions, eventually they lost their last possession in North Africa. More significantly, this kept some of the best Ottoman commanders and troops away from the Balkans and left them particularly unprepared when the Balkan Alliance of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece, with Russia in the background, declared war on the Ottomans in early October 1912.

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The Ottoman armies were disorganized. The number of Ottoman troops available to fight in the Balkans were about half as many overall as the troops of the Balkan Alliance. Military reforms that the Young Turks had tried to make had not yet jelled. For example, the inclusion of young officers in the military was not well integrated; the officers did not know their men as they had in the past.23 The Greek navy blockaded the ports so reinforcements and supplies could not be brought in, and the Ottoman navy was in no shape to counter this. Montenegro declared war 1 October 1912, and Serbia invaded southwards into Ottoman lands. Bulgaria, which had the strongest military, headed eastwards toward Ottoman lands around Edirne and toward Constantinople. The Greek military advanced toward Salonika. Treaties that the Great Powers had signed to support the borders of the Ottoman Empire were ignored. Instead, Western Europe saw the Balkan Alliance of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece effecting a “war of liberation,” and so it actually supported their fighting of what came to be called the First Balkan War (October 1912–May 1913), despite the growing accounts of massacres of Muslim civilians and hundreds of thousands of refugees. It was only during the Second Balkan War,24 which began in June 1913 when the Christian countries of the Balkan Alliance Bohemia

Austria

Austria– Hungary

Galicia

Russia

Hungary Transylvania

Croatia Bosnia Dalmatia

Italy

Crimea

Romania Serbia Montenegro

Albania

Bulgaria

Ottoman Empire

Greece

Figure 6 Map of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans before the First Balkan War, 1911

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fought among themselves, that Western Europe began to take seriously the accounts of atrocities.25 On the path of Sultan Res¸ad’s journey, after only a few weeks of fighting, the Ottomans surrendered Salonika to the Greek military on 6 November 1912. Just before the Greeks entered, the former sultan, Abdu¨lhamid II, was taken away by the German cruiser Lorelei back to Istanbul so he would not fall into enemy hands. Many thousands of Greek troops entered the city, followed the next day by a contingent of thousands of Bulgarian troops who had hoped to take the city before the Greeks. According to Pierre Loti, a Frenchman who had lived in Thrace for years, 500 Turks in Salonika were murdered, Jews were robbed and raped in their homes, and of the 26,000 Turkish prisoners of war there, some were ill-treated and had their eyes put out.26 Salonika had been the commercial port for Macedonia, but it soon became the center for Muslim refugees from the many villages destroyed in the fighting of the Balkan Wars. The land route and trains used by refugees in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877– 8 were blocked by Bulgarian troops who established a military line at C¸atalca, only 35 kilometers from Constantinople. So hundreds of thousands of destitute Muslim refugees gathered by Salonika, hoping to find sea transport to go

Austria–Hungary Hungary Transylvania

Croatia

Dalmatia

Russia

Romania

Bosnia

Serbia Montenegro

Bulgaria

Italy Albania

Greece

Ottoman Empire

Figure 7 Map of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans after the First Balkan War, 1912

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east to Anatolia. Even the Mevlevihane that Sultan Res¸ad had visited in June 1911 fell into ruin as Muslims were expelled, and what was left of it filled with refugees.27 As for the former Jewish majority, they had never gotten along well with the Greeks. Now the Greeks as new masters of the city established market day on Saturday to undercut the Jewish community and their enterprises.28 Many Jewish commercial leaders left with the Muslims for Izmir and Istanbul. The degradation of the Jewish community was made more complete four years later when a fire destroyed much of the major Jewish residential area of Salonika. ¨ sku¨p. Serbian forces, The second city Sultan Resad had visited was U with double the numbers of troops of the Ottomans, marched into ¨ sku¨p in late October 1912, after the three-day battle of Kumanovo in U which they defeated the Ottomans. There was no defense of the city. Leon Trotsky, who was a correspondent for a socialist Kiev newspaper covering the Balkan Wars, reported on the situation around and within ¨ sku¨p within a few days of its takeover by Serbian forces using the U report of a Serbian friend who had managed to receive a military pass to the city. ¨ sku¨p the Serb correspondent saw From the train from Kumanovo to U Albanian villages burning. But when he arrived in U¨sku¨p it was quiet as if deserted. However, he then described that it was during the night that the komitajis, the paramilitaries, did their work of breaking into Albanian and Turkish homes to kill and plunder. The city had 60,000 inhabitants, half of whom were Muslim, and by night, reprisals were being taken against them.29 In the morning by the main bridge over the Vardar one could see hundreds of Albanian corpses without their heads. It was not known if they were local Albanians or if they had come down the river from upstream, but it was clear they had not been killed in battle.30 ¨ sku¨p had become a military camp, but The Serb correspondent said U among the Serb soldiers were Serb peasants who had come looking for plunder. They even carried away windows and doors of Albanian homes, as well as animals and foodstuff. The Serb correspondent was disgusted with the constant brutality he saw from regular Serbian officers. When he confronted them, a corporal noted that they were not like the komitajis. They, the regular army, “would not kill anyone younger than twelve years of age.” But “the komitajis engage in murder, robbery and

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violence as a savage sport,” so much so that the military authorities were embarrassed and sent some of them home.31 The Serb correspondent concluded his written commentary to Trotsky: That’s how this looks when you see it up close. Meat is rotting, human flesh as well as the flesh of oxen; villages have become pillars of fire; men are exterminating ‘persons not under twelve years of age’; everyone is being brutalized, losing their human aspect. War is revealed as, first and foremost, a vile thing, if you just lift up even one edge of the curtain that hangs in front of deeds of military prowess [. . .].32 A British Foreign Office report of the period described a telegram from ¨ sku¨p detailing “atrocities being committed by the Italian consul in U Serbian troops and their evident intention of extirpating as many of the Albanian inhabitants as possible.”33 A longer report was received by the British embassy in Belgrade from a Swiss engineer who was an overseer of the Oriental Railway and reported news of what was going on in ¨ sku¨p since its occupation by Serbian troops. U In particular, the Swiss engineer noted, The behavior of the Serbians towards the Mahommedan population is cruel in every way and seems to have for its object their complete extermination. He noted that Mohammedans were unremittingly shot in Albania. ¨ sku¨p the sound of volleys was heard from early until He noted that in U late, and that the treatment of prisoners was extremely bad, including that of officers, who were shot without formal proceedings of any kind. An order was issued to the soldiers in certain places to kill all Albanians from the age of eight years upwards with a view to extermination. The Serbians have ill-treated the sick, women, and children. He noted that whole villages had been burnt and that mosques had been destroyed. Like Trotsky, the Swiss engineer noted that the bodies of 500

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Albanians were seen floating down the Vardar River. He concluded by saying that the Albanians were desperate.34 ¨ sku¨p because it is a focus of this There is more detail included for U book. Such accounts are not included in Yugoslav or Macedonian history books. A tendency of people who live through such horrors is to not talk of them.35 Often there are not words to describe them, and traumatized people try to move on. But the effect often remains in other ways. The third city visited by Sultan Res¸ad was Prishtina. The Serbs took Prishtina on 22 October 1912. Albanians tried to defend it but were severely outnumbered by the Serbian troops who continued south to Gjilan and Kumanovo and then west to Prizren, Gjakova, and Peja, thereby taking all of Kosova. Foreign journalists were forbidden to ¨ sku¨p enter Kosova. Still news got out. A Danish journalist in U reported that 5,000 Albanians had been killed in Prishtina after the capture of that city, and that the Serbian campaign had “taken on the character of a horrific massacring of the Albanian population.”36 There were also massacres in Gjilan and Ferizaj, where the Sultan had stopped briefly on the train. The Catholic Archbishop, Lazer Mjeda, who was based in Prizren, estimated that by early winter 1913, 25,000 Albanians had been killed by Serbs in Kosova. The purpose was to change the demography of the province, for surely the Albanians were the clear majority.37 And as for the fourth and last city visited by Sultan Res¸ad in Rumeli, Monastir, it had not fared well, either. Monastir had been a military center for the Ottomans with a military academy there. There was a battle between the Serbs and the Ottomans for Monastir where again the Ottomans were deeply outnumbered. The Serbs won and entered Monastir on 19 November 1912. The effect on the local people was horrifying as they had followed the earlier victories of the Bulgarians to the east, the Greeks to the south who blocked any reinforcements, and the Serbs to the north. Again komitajis were at work along with regular troops. According to British consular reports, there was widespread distress in the Monastir district. About 80 percent of villages inhabited by Muslims and Muslim quarters of villages were sacked and partially or wholly destroyed. Early in the campaign thousands of Muslim villagers fled to Salonika and to Monastir. As of January 1913, a third of the remaining 12,000 refugees in Monastir were receiving some form of aid, but the rest

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were not receiving any aid.38 There was a municipal hospital with 30 beds that was supported by outside aid – totally inadequate, given the medical state of the refugees. In sum, the women who spoke of the ill fortune of the places that the ¨ sku¨p, Sultan had visited were correct. All four cities – Salonika, U Prishtina, and Monastir – suffered deeply in the Balkan Wars. Salonika was taken over by the Greek army and its Jewish, Muslim, and Bulgarian citizens suffered. U¨sku¨p, Prishtina, and Monastir were taken over by the Serbian army and their Albanian and Turkish citizens suffered, as well as ¨ sku¨p’s Macedonian citizens and Monastir’s Greek, Vlach, and Jewish U citizens. Nationalism came to imply that people who were not Greek in Salonika or not Serb in the other cities were not trusted; policies were instituted to make the local peoples respectively more “Greek” or more “Serb,” at least in name or schooling. The Ottoman way of dealing with multiple religious communities, each with its own language, schools, and civic leaders, was gone. Muslims, who had been in charge at the imperial level, were no longer in positions of power. Only in Prishtina were Muslims still a numerical majority, but there the Serbian regime was the most oppressive and the Serbian colonial enterprise the most extensive.

Figure 8

Ottoman map of losses in black in “Rumeli” in the Balkan Wars

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In U¨sku¨p, Muslims had become a numerical minority and for the first time in centuries, a political non-entity. But they were not totally alone in that the Slavic Macedonians also had problems with the Serbs. There ¨ sku¨p. were also Vlachs, Jews, and Roma in U When I asked people at the migrant association in Istanbul for memories of the Balkan Wars, one woman told of living in Ohrid, in southern Macedonia, at this time. The Serbs told her family if they did not leave that night, they would destroy their home with them in it. They left. Another woman, Vecihe Hanım, said her grandmother had been hanging clothes on a clothesline when people came running to escape the Serbian soldiers. She had small children with her, and she went with them. Then she remembered the baby. It was Vecihe’s own father, who was back in a basket in the compound. She ran back for the baby, and by then the people were gone, so she stayed and survived. “If she had left, our family would have been different,” noted Vecihe, shaking her head slowly. Several months later I visited Vecihe Hanım at her home. She was from an old U¨sku¨p family, and her paternal grandfather had been a mu¨derris, an Islamic professor. She had old photos of him that she wanted to show me. One of these photos her father had later seen on the wall of a restaurant and had salvaged it. It was of her grandfather with other men in front of a mosque at the time Sultan Res¸ad had come to U¨sku¨p. Indeed, that had been the last visit of an Ottoman sultan to Rumeli. And those Muslims for whom it had been a meaningful visit would live through traumatic times in the twentiteh century in the Balkans, largely under Serbian rule, punctuated by Bulgarian occupations during the two world wars. Some of these families would themselves follow Sultan Res¸ad to Istanbul later in the century when there were no longer sultans in Turkey. But Ottoman history, of which they had long been a part in the Balkans, would be imprinted in their families’ memories.

CHAPTER 2 THE HOME CITY OF ÜSKÜP (SKOPJE) BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS

When the Serbs took over U¨sku¨p in the fall of 1912, they tried to change the name of the city to Skoplje. There is even a famous photograph of two men taking down the official sign for “U¨sku¨p” in Latin letters at the train station and replacing it with a sign of the Serbian form of “Skoplje.” But the local Macedonian Slavs continued to call the city “Skopje”; the Albanians continued to call it “Shkup”; and the Turkish speakers continued to call it “U¨sku¨p” as they had for the past 500 years. Along with its name, when Muslims referred to their city at the time between the world wars, they tended to talk of the gardens behind their homes and the fruit trees in these gardens. Perhaps this was partly in reaction to the horrible events of the Balkan Wars and World War I. For those who survived the Balkan Wars, the Bulgarian occupation of World War I had led to food shortages and forced labor. People grew food in their gardens and drew closer to villagers for the rest of the food they needed. But they came to see the gardens behind their houses as their security, within the walls that enclosed their homes.

¨ sku¨p The Back Gardens of U ¨ sku¨p are gone now. But in the past, Most of the old neighborhoods in U urban neighborhoods were made up of narrow streets with walls

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around the homes on both sides of the streets. This gave privacy to Muslim women, who lived much of their lives in their homes and in their back gardens. There were small doors, kapıcık, from one garden to the next so children and women could pass through without ever going out on the street or in public. One man told me that as a young boy he would go through the small doors of several gardens each day to see which family was making bo¨rek that day. Bo¨rek is a wheat-based pastry, a filo dough that is rolled out very fine and then layered with butter brushed between each layer. There is often cheese or spinach or ground meat in the middle layer. It is then baked and is most delicious. When still a boy, the man said, he could almost always find bo¨rek if he went through enough gardens. Vecihe Hanım told me that her grandmother in U¨sku¨p had many fruit trees in their garden. They had several kinds of figs. The pear trees produced so many kilos of fruit a year, they would keep them in storage under the house and eat them all winter. Her grandmother always had guests coming to the house. Even at 11 in the evening people came, and she served fruit after a meal where people now serve sweets. Hidayet Hanım told me her family had 18 different kinds of fruit ¨ sku¨p. “We had fruit that you do not even see trees in their garden in U today.” And other women told me of their gardens. Clearly their gardens were the center of their lives. Indeed, many of the kitchens were outside in the corner of the garden. They were places for household work and life with family and friends, as well as abodes of security and beauty. Among all the Rumeli women I interviewed in their homes in ¨ sku¨p would come up early in their conversations. Istanbul, the home in U The teacher, Mukaddes Hanım, began her description of the “happiest ¨ sku¨p. She time in my life” with a description of the family house in U began with the garden. It had fruit trees – quince, pear, cherry, apple. We would water them in the early evening. And I would brush the flat stones on the walk until they shone. And the smell of the flowers in the evening [. . .].1 Wedding feasts usually took place in the summer, and these were held in adjoining gardens. The ideal arrangement was to have a garden next to the garden of the house of the groom, and then two other adjoining

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gardens, so that there would be two gardens for the menfolk and two gardens for the womenfolk. The families would work to make the gardens sparkling and full of light in the evenings and nights of the wedding feast and celebrations. Describing the period between the two world wars, people told me of their lives, which they lived within the constraints of the Serbian occupation, but also in spite of it. The period was known informally as “kral zamanı,” that is, “the time of the king,” referring to King Alexander of Yugoslavia, and distinguishing it from “Tito zamanı,” that is, “the time of Tito,” which came after World War II. Again, the time between the wars was a crucial time in shaping the community, for as the woman at the mevlud in Istanbul had told me, it was the time “when we became a minority (in Skopje), and we came together to nourish each other and protect the ways.” Muslims continued to live a tradition-filled life of religious holidays and life-cycle events. These customs permeated local life. I am also interested in relations of Muslims with non-Muslims in this period. Short life stories of Muslims in U¨sku¨p in this period show variety. Unlike the Sultan, who came from the south on his visit to Rumeli, ¨ sku¨plu¨, people of U¨sku¨p, whom I describe came from many of the U families whose ancestors had come from the north to make U¨sku¨p their home.

The Shape of the City ¨ sku¨p in 1911, he came up from Salonika When Sultan Res¸ad came to U by train. He arrived in the train station, which was in the newer part of town south of the Vardar River. This newer part of town had been only cemeteries and municipal gardens until the last quarter of the nineteenth century when the Ottoman government had set up homes in one section south of the Vardar River in what became known as the muhajir mahallesi, “the quarter for emigrants.” This was for the Muslims who had been expelled from their homes by Serbian forces in Nis¸ and Vranya to the north in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 – 8, and who had fled to U¨sku¨p as the nearest Muslim city still under Ottoman rule. With the coming of the railroad from Salonika in 1883, the area around the train station, also south of the river, had grown, as had the

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entire city. U¨sku¨p once again became a hub of trade now that it was connected by rail to the south and the north. ¨ sku¨p had always been north of the Historically, though, the city of U river. So when Sultan Res¸ad arrived at the train station, he would have looked north across the river, where he would have seen a hill with an impressive kale, or fortress, on it. He would have seen the skyline of fifteenth-century mosques and minarets and the red ceramic roofs of the buildings and homes of the people of the city. The first important landmark that the Sultan visited was the Sultan ¨ sku¨p and still stands on a Murat Mosque. It is the largest mosque in U raised piece of land to the east of the Old Bazaar in the old Turkish quarter. It was finished in 1463 and paid for by Sultan Murat II himself, showing the importance of the city to the Ottomans in the fifteenth century. It suffered damage from a fire in the sixteenth century and was repaired, was damaged when the Austrians burned U¨sku¨p in the late seventeenth century, and was later repaired. Again, for the visit of Sultan Res¸ad in 1911 it was spruced up. There is a hexagonal clock tower in its courtyard whose clock chimed until World War II. Sultan Res¸ad donated funds for the school connected to the mosque. But the Serbs would close this school and all other Turkish schools after they came to power in 1912. On his way to the Sultan Murat Mosque, the Sultan passed the famous Stone Bridge over the Vardar River. It is a wide-spanning, 12-arched Ottoman bridge built in the mid-fifteenth century at the time of Mehmet the Conqueror, the son of Sultan Murat II. Some Muslims even call it the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, that is, “the Conqueror Sultan Mehmet Bridge.” It served to join trade routes south of the Vardar River to the Bazaar north of the river. The other place that Sultan Res¸ad visited in U¨sku¨p was the Mevlevihane, on the north side of the Old Bazaar. In traveling there by carriage the Sultan would have passed the Ishak Bey Mosque, known locally as the Alaca Camii, “the multi-colored mosque.” It was built in 1439 by Isa Beg Isakovic´ in honor of his father. Isa Beg also added a medrese and a library, one of the first Islamic libraries in Europe, within the Ishak Beg Mosque. Isa Beg Isakovic´ was an important Ottoman official who was ¨ sku¨p in 1439. He built two important appointed as the sanjak bey of U hans, or inns, in the Old Bazaar for merchants – the Kappan Han and the

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Famous Ottoman stone bridge of Skopje and city, 1918

Suli Han – to promote commerce. He is even credited with building the bedistan, the central and most secure part of the Old Bazaar in ¨ sku¨p. Historically, Isa Beg Isakovic´ is better known as the founder of U Sarajevo in Bosnia in 1461. But we will stay with his contributions to ¨ sku¨p. U Isa Beg Isakovic´ also founded the C¸ifte Hamam, a public bath house ¨ sku¨p, to help fund some of his religious and in the Old Bazaar area of U civic endowments. This bath house had two parts, as its name indicates: one part for women and one for men. Interestingly, it also had a separate room with a pool that was constructed as a ritual bath for Jews. The Jewish residential area was near the Stone Bridge by the Old Bazaar, near the C¸ifte Hamam. Indeed, there were two synagogues in U¨sku¨p: Beit Aron, built in 1366 before the Ottoman conquest, and Beit Yaacov, added later in Ottoman times. What is perhaps telling in Sultan Res¸ad’s visit to U¨sku¨p is the places ¨ sku¨p the he did not visit. Unlike Salonika, Prishtina, and Monastir, in U Sultan did not visit soldiers. That is, he did not visit the barracks in the fortress, the kale, on the hill over the Vardar River. When he first arrived, the Sultan would have seen the fortress when he looked north. It is impossible to miss it as it towers on the hill just north of the river. Indeed, all the powers that ruled U¨sku¨p used the

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natural defense of this hill above the river, from the Romans in the first century to the Byzantines in the late fourth century, from the Bulgars in the tenth century to the Serbs in the fourteenth century. The Ottomans, ¨ sku¨p for the following 520 years, also who came in 1392 and ruled U fortified the hill and positioned barracks within its walls. ¨ sku¨p was only briefly a frontier town with military significance. But U It soon became a central trading center as the Ottoman territories expanded and their armies moved north to Sarajevo and on to Hungary. ¨ sku¨p for the first time, they see the kale on the So when people come to U hill because of its height, and some of the fifteenth-century mosques with their minarets. But the heart of the city is the Bazaar that lies between the fortress and the Sultan Murat Mosque. The Stone Bridge leads to it over the Vardar River. That was true during Ottoman times, and for many Muslims continues to be true today.

The Old Turkish Bazaar The Old Bazaar, the C¸ars¸iye, is intensively built up with hundreds of shops on narrow alleys and stone streets and a bedistan, or inner covered market, in the middle where the truly valuable goods were kept. Taken together, these shops represent the largest Turkish market in the Balkans. If the gardens behind their homes were the security for Muslim women and children, where they could pretend the horrors of the Balkan Wars never took place, the Old Bazaar was the place that Muslim men still had some latitude in relationships with people of different faiths, where they could apprentice to learn a trade and make a living for their families. In the Old Bazaar, Muslims, Christians, and Jews interacted no matter who was in political power, for the craftspeople and those who bought what they made were Muslim, Christian, and Jew alike. People even apprenticed across religious lines. Traditionally governments have had trouble penetrating the Bazaar, its guilds, and its many networks. For the local Muslim people who lived and worked in the Old Bazaar, there is a mosque in the center that is known as the Market Mosque, or Murat Pasha Mosque. Little is known of its origin. Some say that there was a mosque in this location before the Austrians burned the city in 1689. Some say there was a mosque there that was burned in the late eighteenth century. In any case, the current white-plaster mosque was

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built in 1803. A fountain was added in 1937, which shows that Muslims in the interwar period were praying in that mosque. Today it is one of the last to have sermons still in Turkish, even after so many Turks have ¨ sku¨p. left U Indeed, Turkish continued to be the language of the marketplace, as it had been for centuries, until well into the twentieth century. Macedonian Slavs, Vlachs, Jews, Armenians, Albanians, and of course Turks all spoke Turkish in the marketplace. They learned each others’ languages as well, though, for the society was a multilingual one. The Serbian governmental elite insisted on the Serbian language in schools and official documents. But the Old Bazaar, with its narrow streets and small shops, its age-old way of learning, and its guilds that transcended many bounds, slid beneath its grasp. To begin to appreciate how such a Bazaar as the U¨sku¨p marketplace came about, it is valuable to read a description of it from earlier times. The great Ottoman traveler Evliya C¸elebi wrote an account of it ¨ sku¨p twice and recounted that in the seventeenth century. He visited U the Bazaar had 2,150 shops, and a bedistan second only to that of Damascus. Of course, the Old Bazaar was organized by different trade areas, and its members belonged to different esnaf, or guilds – the jewelers and goldsmiths and silversmiths; the watchmakers; the carpenters; the ironworkers, blacksmiths, candlemakers, coppersmiths, soapmakers, and weaponsmiths; the textile workers, tailors, kaftanmakers, basketmakers, ropemakers, carpetmakers, and weavers; the furriers; the cobblers, the slippermakers, the dyers, and especially the tanners, saddlers, and the leatherworkers. The shops were joined by narrow alleys and streets of cobblestone. There were reportedly 30 mosques within the Old Bazaar and churches, too, like Holy Salvation from the sixteenth century, as well as hamams, or bathhouses, like the C¸ifte Hamam or Daut Pas¸a Hamam, and hans, or inns, like the Kurs¸unlı Han. The caravanserais and hans give a good idea of the commerce of the Old Bazaar. Caravanserais are places where traveling merchants could lodge for free for up to three days with their animals. These buildings have inner courtyards and usually a square or rectangular shape so that their gate can be closed for the night. They have at least two stories, with the upper story for the merchants and the lower level to be used as stables

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for their animals. Hans are places where traveling merchants can stay within the area of the Old Bazaar. The Suli Han from the fifteenth century had 54 rooms for guests on its upper level. Yet another han on the north side of the Old Bazaar, the Kurs¸unli Han, built in the sixteenth century, is even more impressive in size. Its name, “the leaded Han,” referred to its roof, which was covered in lead. However, the ¨ sku¨p Bulgarians stole the lead from the roof during their occupation of U in World War I. When a person walked through the Old Bazaar, the Ottoman heritage was most evident in the layout of the small shops and cobblestone streets, in the personal way of interacting across languages and religions, in the occasional mosque or church, and in the hamam and hans. People went there to buy something, to talk with someone, or just to walk. You could also go to have tea or delicious simit pogaca. In the hard times after the Balkan Wars, people went to the Old Bazaar to find training or work, as they had gone for centuries. An example of this is the life of Necati Bey, whom I met at the Rumeli Dernek in Istanbul, where he worked on a regular basis after his main retirement.

¨ sku¨p Necati Bey’s Family and the Old Bazaar in U ¨ sku¨p as a young man of 18 in Necati Bey had come to Istanbul from U 1955. He had worked at different jobs in different areas of Istanbul, from Beyog˘lu to Aksaray. His last position was in a cardiology department where he had worked for seven years before retirement. He was extremely intelligent although his life history had not allowed for much formal education. In fact, he had apprenticed in the Old Bazaar in U¨sku¨p just before he left for Turkey. Necati Bey had been born in 1937 in U¨sku¨p and had attended ¨ sku¨p elementary school in Serbian, the only possibility at that time. In U 2 he had lived in a house near the tekke of the Rufai Order, not too far from the Isa Beg Camii in the old Turkish quarter. ¨ sku¨p, but his father’s family was from Necati Bey’s mother was from U the north in the area of Kac anik, the famous pass between Macedonia and Kosova. His grandfather had lived in a village near Kac anik, but to earn more for his family he had left the village and gone to work on the famous railway, and he had even traveled as far as Belgrade. He had

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learned Serbian in the process. Then he had retired to the village to live out his life with his family. Serb bandits from the mountains between Macedonia and Kosova had struck his village. The village was too far out to receive protection from the Ottoman gendarmes. Fifteen to twenty haydut, or bandits, raided the village. “Give us your weapons,” they demanded, “or we will burn the village.” The older women, having lived through such an event before, took the young girls to the woods where they kept goats and sheep to hide them from the bandits. They also took their valuables and hid them in different places. But as for the weapons, they took out 15 to give them to the robber band. Necati explained that three people from the village went to the robbers, including his grandfather, since he knew Serbian. They put the weapons on a mule. The robbers took the three men with the mule with the weapons and led them outside the village on the edge where water flowed. They covered their eyes. Then from behind they shot them. His grandmother yelled, “They shot my Aydın!” The villagers came and buried them, putting a stone each on top, three in a row. And his grandmother was left with five children. She had some animals but no man. What could she do? She had come as a bride to the village. But his grandfather’s uncle lived in U¨sku¨p. He was a hafız and served as an imam in a small mosque in the city. He heard what had happened and came to the village. He told Necati’s ¨ sku¨p.” grandmother, “Medhiye Hanım, come with your children to U ¨ But she said, “How can we come to Usku¨p? The children are little. We don’t have anything. There is no house there.” “We will work it out,” he persuaded. His grandmother got ready. Two quilts, two bedrolls, utensils, several pots and pans. The animals she would leave for the relatives in the village. She brought jam, cheese, bo¨rek, butter, and milk. And they went ¨ sku¨p. There was an elderly couple there, relatives, with no children. to U They had two houses and a big garden. They would live there and take care of the older woman while her husband, who was a watchman at a mill, was at work. His grandfather’s brother, Hafız Aga, took his uncles to the C¸ars¸iye, the Turkish Bazaar, to visit the guilds to see who needed an apprentice. His father was the youngest. One day his great uncle took him around. His father wanted to be a quilt-maker, a yorgancı. He wanted to be this

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very much. But it wasn’t to be. Rather, he took him to a farrier, the man who makes horses’ shoes, a nalband. The wife of the farrier was related to his mother. So, since he was Medhiye’s son, the man agreed to take him on as an apprentice. And, slowly, things worked out. In time they did their required military service. And they married, in turn. First his oldest uncle, then his aunt married. His other aunt died at a young age. Finally his father married. They all lived in that house together. When the older people died they sold the house and bought another one with four rooms and a large courtyard. The kitchen was in the corner of the garden. It had a big garden. So each family had their own space. Necati explained, I was born in that house that my father shared with his brothers. They would work all week and would bring their money to my oldest uncle. He had the kasa, the strongbox, and each week they would discuss how much money each needed. My father was the first to want to separate because there were fifteen people in that house. They made large meal gatherings. But my mother was the youngest bride. So as soon as she sat down, one of the children would ask her to bring something. My mother had to get up all the time. So my father said he wanted money for a separate house. His brother agreed. He found one made out of sundried brick. Most historic houses then were made that way. And he fixed it up. Then during the Second World War, the Germans occupied Macedonia and all of Yugoslavia. But the Germans put the ¨ sku¨p. The Bulgarians sent my father and Bulgarians in charge of U other Muslim men into forced labor in Bulgaria. They didn’t know where they were going or for how long. They had to make a tunnel for a train in a place called Simitli. There was hardly any food. There was no pay. It was very hard on the family. When he came back he said, “We will go to Turkey.” My mother’s brother had come to Turkey before the war in 1938. And my father knew someone else who had come a few years before the war too. When it finally became possible for Muslims to leave Yugoslavia in the early 1950s, my father said, “I want my sons to do their military service in Turkey.” And they emigrated.

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But notice the unspoken. What Necati’s father was also saying was that he did not want his sons to do their military service in Yugoslavia. By then military service under Tito had become harder on Muslims than it had been in the time of Necati’s father and his uncles. In the interwar period, the time of the king, Muslims doing their military service in Yugoslavia had been allowed to have food without pork. As they said, there were two pots: one for the Christians and one for the Muslims and Jews. But after World War II, in the time of “Brotherhood and Unity,” as Tito’s slogan went, there was only one pot. So Muslims would have to eat pork or not eat during their military service. Or had the father just rued the fact that he had not left before the war and could thereby have escaped the forced labor experience? World War II in U¨sku¨p was especially hard on Muslims since the Bulgarians were in charge and, as multiple people told me, took out their animosity on Muslims by shorting them on food rations and sending them to forced labor, among other deprecations. Yet it was the Jews who suffered most. The Yugoslavs enacted an antiSemitic law in 1939 that limited their areas of commerce. When the Germans arrived the Jews were forced into ghettos in Monastir, where ¨ sku¨p and in there had been a community for 400 years, and in U Ishtip. During the Bulgarian occupation there were laws passed through which they were forbidden to engage in commerce, and then their property was taken. In March 1943 orders were given for their expulsion along with Thracian Jews. The Bulgarians sent them all first to a tobacco warehouse in Skopje and then to a detention center by the Danube, from whence they were sent to Treblinka and their deaths. Fully 98 percent of Macedonian Jews died in the Holocaust.3 Bulgaria is rightly proud not to have sent Jews in Bulgaria proper to the concentration camps, but they are nevertheless responsible for sending 11,300 Jews in the lands they occupied – Macedonia and Thrace – to their deaths in Treblinka in 1943. In Macedonia alone, ¨ sku¨p 7,144 people were deported, of whom only 50 survived. In U there was one day’s notice of the coming expulsion, but since it was so isolated, people did not believe the news and did not flee. In Monastir, out of a community of 3,000 Jews, one eight-year-old Jewish boy was saved by the Albanian consul.4 A few teenage Jewish girls were hidden briefly in a cigarette stand until they went off to fight for the resistance, where some were killed and one survived to write about it.5 There is even

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some understanding that the Jews in old Bulgaria were saved by the understanding that those in Bulgaria’s annexed lands would not be spared.6 As for the gypsies in Macedonia, if they were Muslim, which most were, they were spared. At the time of the expulsions to the concentration camps, the Axis was trying to bring Turkey in on its side and was afraid of antagonizing Muslims – or at least, that was the explanation. But non-Muslim gypsies from Macedonia were taken off to Treblinka and killed with the Jews from Macedonia. Returning to Necati Bey, if we consider cumulative trauma, his grandfather had been murdered by bandits in his village in his old age. His father had been raised by a single mother and lived through the Ottoman loss of Macedonia in the Balkan War, the Serbian takeover, World War I, and 20 years of Serbian occupation, followed by the Bulgarian occupation and forced labor during World War II. The new Yugoslav– Macedonian regime that followed in U¨sku¨p after World War II was not an improvement for many Muslims. And yet, when Necati Bey went back to U¨sku¨p 45 years later, in 2000, he visited the home of his usta, his master, who had trained him, and who was a Macedonian Vlach Christian. He knocked on the door. The son, who looked at lot like his father, answered. Necati Bey asked if his father or mother was home. “My father has passed away, but my mother is here,” the son answered. Necati Bey asked if he could come in. Of course, he was told. He went in. He remembered the house. He asked where the mother was. In the kitchen. He knocked on the door. Necati opened the door when she responded, and he asked if she wanted a guest. She was sitting on the sofa and was older. She had a black headscarf and black dress. Necati asked if she recognized him. She looked at him. Then in Macedonian she said, “Ti si Necat!” Then she stood up. He ran to her and kissed her hand in respect. She hugged him and he hugged her. He recounted, She said, “You were always on our mind. Only now how is it possible that you have come? Are you married? Do you have children?” We talked. I had learned from a relative that a daughter had died at eighteen from kidney disease. I told her that I had heard that. But I had not heard that the master had died.

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She offered me Paskalya cake. Two more relatives came. She explained, “This was our apprentice. We love him very much. See, 45 years later he came to visit us.” I had a piece of cake. Before I left I gave them presents I had brought for them. Socks for the grandchildren, cologne, and lokum, a Turkish sweet. And a purse. I had made a packet for them. And a black scarf for her. She was very grateful. She started to cry. She told her sister to bring a basket and put red eggs in it – for your grandchildren, she said. It was deeply touching for me. Through all the history of wars and occupations, the relationship of master and apprentice endures. The respect and manners within the basic relationship of the Old Bazaar put to shame the differences that nationalist politics prescribe.

Hasan Yelmen and a Life in Leather If the Old Bazaar in the traditional sense figured in the life stories of Necati Bey’s family, leather production in the more modern sense was ¨ sku¨p, who also central to the life story of another man raised in U emigrated to Istanbul, and who also was a member of the migrant association there. To be precise, leather production had traditionally been a specialty of the Old Bazaar, whose saddlers had outfitted Ottoman military units. The move to modern production still involved building on knowledge of the older craft of tanning and the traditional networks for raw materials. One day, in the basement library of the Rumeli Association in Istanbul, Necati Bey asked me if I had seen the book that Hasan Yelmen had written about his life. I had not. Since Necati Bey’s advice was invariably good, I looked for the book on Hasan Yelmen and found it. It was a well-illustrated history of 2,500 years of leather production that also included the life story of the author, entitled Bir O¨mru¨ Deriyorum, “A Life I Live in Leather.”7 Like Necati Bey’s family, Hasan Bey’s family had come from the north. His was an old family that considered its members evlad-i fatihan in the sense that they had come with early Ottoman soldiers to Vranya, north of Kosova in central Rumeli. Then they had moved to the kaza of Preshova in the eastern part of old Kosova, where they had lived for 400 years. Among

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Hasan Bey’s ancestors were Sufi sheykhs, hojas, and ag˘as. Hasan Bey included a family tree in Ottoman in his book and a photograph of tombs of several generations of sheykhs from his family in the mausoleum of the Halveti tekke. In regions where local administration was weak, Sufi orders often took up the slack and provided respected leaders of their communities.8 Hasan Bey’s grandfather was well-to-do in nineteenth-century Ottoman Rumeli. He also put great store in education, and for this reason he sent his two sons, including Hasan Bey’s father, Mahmut Bey, to Istanbul to study. But when Mahmut Bey came home from the Bahriye School on vacation, his family had missed him so much, they persuaded him to marry and arranged a marriage with Fitnat Hanım of Kumanova in northern Macedonia. This was in 1912. In the first year of their marriage, the Balkan Wars exploded. To avoid the initial rampage of the Serbian armies, the family escaped from Preshova and went south to U¨sku¨p to the house of an uncle where they felt safer. They had to leave quickly, so Hasan Bey’s mother, Fitnat Hanım, left her whole trousseau, all the beautiful garments that she had brought with her from Kumanova, with the Serbian servants whom she trusted. After the Ottomans lost the Balkan War, the family returned to Preshova and to their house. But on their return they had a great shock. His mother opened the door and went inside, where she fell down and fainted. The Serbian women who worked as servants in the house were all dressed in her wedding trousseau! And for many long years afterwards, she would cry when she recounted to her children what had happened. In those years a young Muslim woman’s trousseau took years to make and she and others would have sewn her gowns, robes, dresses, shawls, scarves, veils, stockings, slippers, and undergarments in silks and satins and embroidered them all by hand. Some would have been sewn with gold and silver thread. Such a trousseau would have been her pride and joy, and the symbol of her self-worth. It would have been carried with much show from Kumanova to Preshova and would have been displayed for the guests to see before her wedding day. The servants would have known this, too, and given the bonds of servant and mistress then, they could only have thought her dead. And, still, it was galling.

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After the Balkan Wars and his marriage, Hasan Bey’s father did not return to Istanbul. Instead he went to Belgrade, the capital of the country that Presheva was newly a part of, namely, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, as it was called from 1918 to 1929. As Hasan Bey noted, his father had become interested in politics. His father became a candidate for the parliament in Belgrade as a representative for the Turkish minority. Mahmut Bey and Fitnat Hanım had four children, two girls and two boys. Hasan Bey was the youngest. He was born in Presheva in 1923. But soon after he was born, his father decided to move the whole family ¨ sku¨p. He later explained that he did not want his children to grow to U up in a small town. It would be better for their upbringing and education to be part of a larger place. I cannot help but wonder how much this decision was affected by politics in Kosova at this time and the parliament in Belgrade, since leaving Presheva meant leaving his parliamentary position as well. ¨ sku¨p in the mid-1920s. His father was Hasan Bey’s family moved to U not naı¨ve. They had been in U¨sku¨p during the Balkan War and seen the initial Serbian occupation. But the Serbian occupation of Kosova to the north, where Presheva was located, was more brutal and colonialization by Serbs there more extensive than in Macedonia. Mahmut Bey’s family had an advantage in that they were fluent in Serbian, since Presheva was in a region where Albanian and Serbian, as well as their Turkish, were all spoken. I wonder if he used the name “Yelmanic´” in this period. Certainly a Serbian suffix would have been helpful. Indeed, the post office refused to deliver mail if Bulgarian-type names with – ov endings were used. Many people added the Serbian – ic´ to their names. In any case Hasan Bey’s father had to find a new profession in ¨ sku¨p. He went to his wife’s brother, Eyu¨p Haji Hasan Bey, who was a U respected merchant. He had conducted import–export business with Germany and owned a large factory in leather production. Through connections with his brother-in-law, Mahmut Bey went into business with Ahmet Ag˘a, a master tanner and leather producer. According to their partnership, Ahmet Ag˘a and his son Nurettin Bey would direct a tannery along the Vardar River. The leather they produced was like Moroccan leather, a sort of combination of manufactured leather and goat skin that Mahmut Bey would market in a large store in U¨sku¨p that he also directed. Meanwhile the tannery had a need for raw leather and chemicals. In this

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way, by 1925, Hasan Bey’s family had taken its first steps into the world of leather production, something that Hasan Bey would pursue for decades to come. ¨ sku¨p’s clock tower, which Hasan Bey went to elementary school by U was in the courtyard of the Sultan Murat Mosque, where there had earlier been an Ottoman school. But the school Hasan Bey attended only taught in Serbian. Hasan Bey received Turkish lessons outside of school from a close friend of his father’s. Hasan Bey did well in the Serbian school and even received the book prize for the best student several years in a row. But the school was for Muslim students, and as Hasan Bey said, the Serbian directors did not want the Turkish children to know much. One day when Hasan Bey cut classes, it just so happened that the Turkish master saw him. When he went home that afternoon he was interrogated by his father. He explained to his father, “For months our teacher has not taught us a thing. That’s why I did not go to class. And from now on I will not go!” Hasan Bey finished elementary school and entered gymnasium, the Serbian secondary school. But although he was a good student, he could not succeed in the classes because the Turkish students had not been given sufficient education in their earlier years. There were no private schools, so what would he do to continue his education? His father sent him to the Velika Medrese, a school that taught only Muslim children, where he studied for the next two-and-a-half years. Throughout this time Hasan’s father continued the contacts with European merchants and factory directors that he had made earlier as a Yugoslav member of parliament. They had an understanding with Germany’s largest chemical producer, I. G. Farbenindustrie AG Firm. This firm made all the chemicals necessary for leather and paints and taught the new technologies in tanning. Through this and the special chromium manufactured leather process, by the 1930s, they had moved to a stage of modernization in leather production. Meanwhile the younger partner, Nurettin Keskiniz, had emigrated to Turkey, where he was selling their leather products in the Kapalıc ars¸ı, Istanbul’s large Covered Bazaar. But Turkey was not an easy market. After a few years he sent Hasan’s father a letter telling him that he was coming back to U¨sku¨p. Hasan’s father told him to stop, to wait and stay in Istanbul, that he was selling all their property and that he would be there soon with his family.

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Hasan’s father was forward-looking and emigrated with the whole ¨ sku¨p in 1937. Hasan later asked his father why, family to Turkey from U since he had left when things were fine in Macedonia. His father explained that as a former member of parliament he had wanted to live under his own flag and had decided to make this possible. In thinking of the future of his children he found emigration appropriate. The Tito regime had not yet come, but the early signs of communism were there. He had sold their business at much less than its full value in 1936. They had rented a store by the Kapalıc ars¸ı, the Covered Bazaar, in old Istanbul. By 1937 he was there with his family. And as soon as a building opened up in Kazlıc es¸me, they took it. There they established their factory for leather production, known as the Mahmut Yelmen and Nurettin Keskiniz Collective Company. This area on the Marmara Sea had been a place for leather tanning and production for decades. As for Hasan, he enrolled in the Pertevniyal High School in Aksaray, a good high school in Istanbul. He graduated in 1941 and went to Istanbul University in chemical engineering, graduating in 1945. He then did an internship at Beykos Leather and Shoe Factory, the oldest leather company in Turkey, which had made boots for the Ottoman Army since 1802. So Hasan’s family escaped U¨sku¨p before World War II, and they escaped the confiscation of private property that followed in the communist takeover. Further, Hasan Bey was able to get the appropriate higher education in Turkey that was unavailable to him in Yugoslavia. Mahmut Bey, Hasan Bey’s father, was indeed forwardlooking and astute in his timing. He had tried out the new parliament in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, used it to make contacts in Germany with factory directors, but decided when it was ¨ sku¨p. He had then no longer of value and moved his family to U entered the entirely new business of leather production through contacts with his brother-in-law and made a long-standing partnership that prospered. He had modernized production, and within 12 years he had moved his family again, this time to Istanbul. In this ¨ sku¨p to the Kapalıc ars¸ı, the move he had gone from the Old Bazaar in U Covered Bazaar, in Istanbul. But he had built on what he knew – namely, leather production. In fact, he had converted his assets in Macedonia into leather goods to sell in Turkey.

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Hasan Bey himself would become crucial in the forming of the Vardarlılar Dernek, the immigrant association of people from around Skopje, in the early 1950s. His organizational skills and his access to an old tannery building would help the early 1950s immigrants who came from Macedonia. He would also try to give as many immigrants as possible work in his father’s leather factory that he eventually inherited and expanded into the well-known company Derimod. Most families, however, did not have the resources, the acumen, or the good fortune of Hasan Bey’s family. Much more common were families whose lives were more directly affected by events of the twentieth century in Macedonia, like the grandmother of Hidayet Hanım.

Muhabbet Hanım Weaves Her Family With the wars, political occupations, and times of lack of local order in the first half of the twentieth century in Macedonia, many women found themselves in situations where, like Necati’s mother, they had to fend for their families in ways they would not have imagined. And as women in general had not had opportunities for formal schooling, it is not surprising that they relied on the skills they did have, like sewing. Hidayet Hanım still has a thimble that belonged to her grandmother, ¨ sku¨p in 1890. When I first visited Muhabbet Hanım, who was born in U Hidayet Hanım in Fatih in Istanbul, I saw her collection of thimbles, and her grandmother’s thimble stood out. It had its own metal case, shaped like a small bronze egg that opened to reveal a thimble of the same color with holes in the case to hold needles as well. It was the custom for the oldest person in a family to name new children, and as Hidayet Hanım’s mother had son after son, Muhabbet Hanım had named the first three of them. She had hoped for a daughter for the fourth, and had the name “Hidayet” ready, but then another son came. Meanwhile the grandmother would weave for other relatives who needed cloth for their homes or trousseaux, saying, “as wide as I weave on the loom with my arms, so wide I keep open the grave.”9 ¨ sku¨p. She Muhabbet Hanım had lived through major changes in U remembered well the earlier Ottoman times when her family had been one of means. But the earlier times had not worked out so well for her. She was known to say, “Do not pray that your children be beautiful. They

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will suffer. Do not pray that your children be knowledgeable. They too will suffer.”10 She had been married to a man who turned out to be a gambler. But in those times, out of shame, she said nothing to her family. Her father only found out when he tried to visit her and she couldn’t open the door for him because her husband had locked her in. Her father broke down the door and took his daughter home. The trousseau that she had brought with her had been so extensive that only a camel could have carried it. But she went back to her father’s home with next to nothing. Her father was able to obtain a divorce for her only by foregoing all the compensation she should have received. But later, when her father happened to see his daughter’s trousseau being sold at the Kurs¸unlu Han, he fell down paralyzed from sadness, and soon after he died. Muhabbet Hanım married again, but when she was pregnant, her second husband died. This was just before the time of the First Balkan War and she was 21 years old. She had her baby, a girl, Sevdiye, who would be Hidayet’s mother, in 1911, and then the next year war came to ¨ sku¨p. There was much commotion in the streets. She ran out into the U street, carrying the swaddling of her new baby. A neighbor asked where she was going. She said where everyone else was going. But then she realized the baby was still at home, and she ran back for the cradle. By the time she got back and headed out again, all departures were blocked, and so she went back home. Soon after the Balkan Wars, during World War I, Muhabbet Hanım was made to marry yet again because the family was worried that since their house was large, if she wasn’t married with family, soldiers would be quartered there. She had two more daughters. Meanwhile, Hidayet Hanım’s mother, Sevdiye Hanım, was growing up and was a great help to her mother. She was able to do much around the house at an early age. She also studied Qur’an. This was at a time when pens and notebooks were scarce, so young people would look at the Holy Book or notebook, but then learn by writing with chalk on marble. Later, when there were courses, she attended and received documents of completion. ¨ sku¨p for Muslims was problematic at this time. The Schooling in U Turkish schools had been closed, and only Serbian schools were open. Most Muslim parents did not want their children in these schools.

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In 1935 school attendance was made compulsory, and then all attended the Serbian schools. But until then, some had private lessons in Turkish like Hasan Yelmen, some attended the Serbian schools like him, and some went only to Qur’an schools. For example, Sevdiye Hanım completed her study of the Qur’an in the sense that she “read through the Qur’an.” There was a custom that Muslim families had when a child completed reading through the entire Qur’an with a teacher, often a hoja. They would celebrate this accomplishment. If it were a boy, he would be outfitted in a new suit. The other boys in the neighborhood would gather and would parade with him in the lead to his house, chanting ilahis. At his home, he would recite suras of the Qur’an that the hoja had requested him to memorize and prayers. When this was done, the prayer for reading through the Qur’an would be read, the young man would show respect to the elders, and money would be given. If it were a girl, she would be dressed as a bride with a veil and a crown and a new dress. She too would recite verses from the Qur’an and prayers. There would be simit pogaca and tea served to people, or maybe later baklava or s¸ekerpare, another delicious sweet. The hoja who had instructed the child or children, for sometimes this was a group event, would receive a special gift wrapped in a bundle. This always included cloth, and perhaps also socks, and maybe a shirt. Returning to Muhabbet Hanım, her husband from the time of World War I was a good man, and he was concerned about Muhabbet Hanım’s future. He had other children by an earlier marriage as well. He knew the character of his children and told his wife, “Marry your daughter Sevdiye to my son, Ilyas. He will take care of her and of you.” Sevdiye Hanım had sewn her trousseau all by herself. She worked on the embroidery frame by lamplight. And when cleaning the gas lamps, which was an important task before electricity came, Sevdiye Hanım would sing Rumeli folk songs that later would make her cry. At age nine she put on the headscarf and veil. At age 16 Sevdiye Hanım was married to Ilyas Aga, the son of her stepfather. He took care of her and his mother-in-law as his father had predicted. Ilyas Aga was a nalband like the father of Necati Bey, that is, he was a ¨ sku¨p. He was a blacksmith, and he had a shop in the Old Bazaar in U man known for his integrity, skill, and respect. The shop next to him in the Old Bazaar was owned by a Serbian Orthodox Christian, C¸ic o Anto,

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and his son. In 1944 Ilyas Aga had to go dig ditches as a reserve soldier to try to prevent the German tanks from coming into the city. In Ilyas Bey’s absence from his shop, C¸ic o Anto had his own son work with Ilyas Aga’s older son so he would not be alone in his father’s shop. And every day that Ilyas Aga was gone, C¸ic o Anto would come to the gate of their home and call out respectfully to Sevdiye Hanım, “Bride, do you have need of anything?” She was alone with four children, and they didn’t know how long Ilyas Bey would be away. Years later, after Muhabbet Hanım had passed away, and Sevdiye Hanım and Ilyas Aga and their four sons and daughter had long emigrated to Istanbul, Ilyas Aga’s former work colleague, C¸ic o Anto, and his family went on pilgrimage to the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Ephesus, and they stopped at Ilyas Aga’s home in Istanbul on their way to Izmir. It was 1975, 21 years since Ilyas Aga and C¸ic o Anto had seen each other. They embraced each other and for 15 minutes could not be separated.11 Like Necati Bey and the family of his master, the bond of Ilyas Aga and C¸ic o Anto persisted over time, and defied the lines of religion and ethnicity.

Surviving through Family Ways How did Muslims in U¨sku¨p survive the interwar years? The first years were probably the most difficult. Many Muslims migrated to Turkey or died in the first years of the Serbian occupation beginning in 1912. As the British vice-consul in Monastir noted in 1914, whereas Muslims only made up 30 percent of the population of the town because of migration, still 60 percent of those who died that year were Muslims.12 That is, mortality was much higher among Muslims than among the Christians due to illness, stress, and starvation. Muslim landowners and villagers were especially targeted. The landowners were taxed exorbitantly, while the villagers were subject to policies like the prohibition on cutting wood even in their own forests to make their lives impossible and force them to emigrate. This policy, as explained to the British vice-consul by the garrison commander in Monastir, was to free up villages for Serbian colonists. In 1919 the political party known as the Cemiyet (Islam Muhafaza-i Hukuk Cemiyet, or “the Society for the Preservation of Muslim Rights”) was founded by Muslims from Macedonia, Kosova, and the Sandjak in

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¨ sku¨p. Its purpose was to try to protect the rights of Muslims and U Muslim landlords. In the 1920 and 1923 elections for the parliament in Belgrade it elected eight and then 14 representatives. And although it was part of the governing coalition in 1920, its policies were ignored. In 1925 its leader, Ferhad Draga, was arrested and put in prison and the Cemiyet was disbanded. What was important about the experience of Cemiyet was that it brought together Muslims of different classes in Rumeli society – beys, artisans, merchants, former mid-level officials – and they came together ¨ sku¨p acknowledged in a new urban solidarity.13 The community from U as much. And as a more united community, the Muslims of U¨sku¨p were better able to survive the interwar years. As a sign of this I never heard among the Rumeli people of the migrant association the terms of class differences that were so common in nineteenth-century Ottoman society in Istanbul. And the initial naming of their association as “Vardarlılar,” that is, “those of the Vardar River,” reinforced this non-class-bound identity. One of the major difficulties of these interwar years were the Serbian administrators, whose poor quality was recognized by the foreign consuls. In addition, these administrators were not paid much, so it was difficult to attract competent people and those they did attract were inclined to corrupt practices. And yet Muslim people did survive in U¨sku¨p, thanks to strong families that pooled what resources they had left. They survived through loyalty to networks in the Old Bazaar, through the urban solidarity that had grown across classes during Serbian rule, and through traditions that had long given meaning to people’s lives. But Muslims were much poorer than they had been before the Serbian occupation. So, for example, instead of a separate circumcision ceremony for each son, a family might wait and then have the ceremony for several sons. Traditionally for circumcision, the “bed day” was on a Thursday and the guests would come to the home, where a bedstead would be decorated with handsome spreads, quilts, and pillows and the wall above the bed would also be decorated. Then there would often be a special feast in honor of the circumcision. On Friday people could come and see the decorated bed, while on Saturday sweets and other food were prepared. On Sunday the male guests would gather, and there would be tea. Before the mevlud would begin, the young boys in their special

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circumcision garb would be driven around with their friends in a carriage, a sort of controlled joy ride, and they would each have a fez on their heads. On returning home, they would kiss the hands of their elders and would be given money for their fez. Then the barber would perform the circumcision. Afterwards, there would be food, either a meal or simit pogaca with tea. And then there would be sweets served.14 And, of course, for young women there were the customs for marriage. In former times weddings were seen as a main time of pleasure for young women.15 But I do not think the bride should be included in this group. She is a central player, but the stakes for her are too high. Her world changes as she moves from the home she has known her whole life to the home of her new husband, where she is a virtual stranger who must show constant respect and serve all there. As the Rumeli woman at the association noted after the mevlud ceremony, “In our marriages, if love comes, good, but there must above all be respect. The bride used to stand all the time while serving others.” I have witnessed such standing in immigrant communities of Albanian Muslims from Macedonia in New York City. But to make sure the customs I describe are those of U¨sku¨p, I rely on Hidayet Ilimsever’s remarkable account in her book, Our Back Gardens of Skopje. What is clear is that marriage is not between a man and a woman; it is between two families. As a sign that this is not to be taken for granted: after the young woman has been identified, and her family has shown positive signs, representatives of both families would meet, greet each other, and drink a glass of water, with the hopes that it would go smoothly – the way water flows. Then the young man’s family would give a gift of a valuable muslin scarf or shawl or embroidered veil, and it was understood that the girl was spoken for. A month before the wedding, a tailor and representatives of the groom’s family would go to that of the young woman to take measurements. The tailor would make the bride’s gown, a coat, and several dresses. The tailor always went to the girl’s house for fittings. A week before the wedding, the girl would organize her trousseau and arrange it in a special room in her home. On top of the trunk there would be a quilt, a pillow, and a blanket, and if her family could afford it, a kilim, or woven rug. She would also have towels, washcloths, sheets, pillowcases, underwear, robes, and silk slippers, all hand embroidered. All would have special cloth cases that were also embroidered. Some

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trousseaux even included a case for the Qur’an. By the Friday before the wedding, her trousseau would be all arranged in the room. On that day, the gift garments from the groom’s family for the bride would be brought, too, and arranged for all to see with the trousseau. Late Saturday they would be packed in the trunk. The actual marriage contract would be negotiated on Sunday. In the interwar period this was a religious ceremony with a religious leader present. The main question is, God forbid, if the marriage does not last, how much money will the woman be given? After this is settled, the wedding contract is signed by representatives of the families, and the ceremony of carrying the trousseau begins. An honored young man carries the trunk from the young woman’s house to a carriage, and then it is transported to the groom’s house. On Monday, a group of people from the girl’s family goes to the groom’s home to unpack her trunk in the room where she will live. They display the trousseau and bride’s gift garments. Hidayet Hanım makes the point that the trousseau is very important to the self-respect and dignity of the young woman. It is her pride.16 It displays her skill with needle and thread, but also the ability of her family to provide her with materials and basic household items. When a girl comes from a poor family, sometimes the groom’s family very quietly gives funds so that her trousseau can be expanded. The trousseau is what she brings with her from her home. And so when Hasan Yelmen’s mother saw the Serbian servant women, whom she had trusted, wearing her trousseau, she was rightly aghast. On several levels this was a betrayal. Returning to wedding customs, the most important night at the young woman’s home is the “henna night.” This is midweek. In the morning the young woman goes with her girlfriends to the public bath and is prepared to be a bride. For the first time she will be allowed to wear makeup and earrings, have her eyebrows plucked, and so forth. Then they all return to her home for a meal. Later, they sing and act out until the wee hours when they finally put henna on the hands and feet of the bride. The other girls only get henna on their little finger and toe. On Thursday, everyone waits for the family of the groom at the young woman’s house. When they arrive they are served lokum, sherbet, and tea. Two young women take the young bride-to-be by the arms, and with her veiled, lead her to the door. She says goodbye to members of her family,

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finally to her father, and then to her mother. This is perhaps the saddest part of all, for she will no longer be part of this family. She is led to the carriage veiled. But she is always with others in the carriage who will bring her good fortune in her marriage. At the groom’s house, the groom takes her by the arm and brings her to the gate. This is the first time that the groom sees his bride, but she does not look up from shyness. She holds the Qur’an under her right arm. At the door she is met by a woman with two dishes: one of honey, one of flour. The bride-to be puts her finger in the honey and runs it over the upper threshold so that their life will be sweet. She then puts her finger in the flour and runs it again over the upper threshold so that their life will be bountiful. She enters the door with her right foot first. She goes into the room with her trousseau and takes off her veil. Then she looks at the groom. Meanwhile the guests who have been gathered for hours waiting are now dancing. The gypsy musicians are playing. And the bride is veiled again and sits where all can see her. When the others have a meal, the bride is taken back to her room, where she eats alone. She is given a simple meal without meat. It is understood that if the bride eats meat on the first night, there will be fighting in the marriage. She is given sweets so that the marriage will have sweetness. She is not totally alone, however, for there are several young girls who wait with her, as well as a young male child. When the groom finally comes to the room, he knocks on the door and the others leave. He comes in and performs two prayer prostrations. Then the door is locked for the night. Meanwhile the guests party and make noise for the rest of the night downstairs. On Friday morning, the house is still full of guests and tea and simit pogaca is served. The bride puts on her wedding dress, and the groom is all smiles. The bride must now kiss everyone’s hand, from old to young. But this is also the time that the groom’s family members give her gifts of gold necklaces or rings and earrings, after which she kisses their hands. There may be heirlooms, pearl necklaces, coral necklaces, diamond rings, or broaches and jewelry from gold coins as well. Saturday evening is the first time that the new bride eats with her new family. She washes the hands of the older members before the meal and brings them towels. She helps serve. On Tuesday, the bride has her girlfriends come visit her at her new home and she wears her wedding dress again. Then Thursday evening, one week after the wedding night,

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her family comes to the groom’s home and they all have a meal together. By now they are getting used to each other. The next days are filled with visits of different members of the families to the bride’s house. At the end of the next week, there is again a formal meal with the two families. And again after the next week, another meal with both families. Finally, after about 20 days, the bride returns for the first time to her father’s home. She goes without her husband and stays there for three days. Then her husband comes for her and she returns to her new home.17 Clearly, this presumes a close-knit community. And as families got larger with multiple brides and children, one could see why Necati’s parents wanted their own home. But people who have skills for living in close quarters often have much wisdom. The Muslim community of ¨ sku¨p was able to adapt from the tighter community of the central U Balkans to the more spread-out mahalles, or neighborhoods, of Istanbul 15 years later. But first they would have to survive World War II, civil war, and the shift of Yugoslavia to communism. This would lead to even more changes, including a rendering illegal of religious practices that were so much part of the fabric of their lives between the wars.

CHAPTER 3 THREE STRIKES:WORLD WAR II, STATE TERRORISM, AND COMMUNISM

What makes people who have gone through so much finally decide they must leave their homes and move to another land? It appears that the Bulgarian occupation during World War II, followed by the terrorizing events of 1948 and the policies of the new communist state, all combined to push Muslims to emigrate when the path to Turkey was finally open, beginning in 1953. But even before World War II, Muslims had been leaving for Turkey. In the interwar period from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, there were 115,500 Muslims who had gone to Turkey from Macedonia, Kosova, and Bosnia, and most were from Macedonia.1 A 1937 memorandum by a Serb intellectual regarding policies that Yugoslav officials could conceivably follow to expel Muslims, as well as the agreement that Yugoslavia and Turkey signed in 1938, made clear attitudes toward non-Slavic Muslim minorities.

“The Expulsion of the Arnauts” Near the end of the interwar period, there was an agreement initiated by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and signed by Turkey in 1938 for the deportation of 200,000 Albanians from Yugoslavia to Turkey. Turkey was to be paid for taking these Muslims.

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The year before, Vaso Cˇubrilovic´, Serb historian and member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, had written the “Expulsion of the Arnauts”2 memorandum, in which he acknowledged that the Serbian colonization policy of “southern Serbia” had not worked. The only alternative, according to Cˇubrilovic´, was the expulsion of Albanians in Kosova and northwest Macedonia. The memorandum both justified and explained how this was to be accomplished. The advent of World War II prevented this forced deportation. But the fact that Yugoslavia and Turkey so readily signed such a document gave non-Slavic Muslims in Yugoslavia, that is, the Turks and the Albanians, grave misgivings about their future. Although it was not implemented, the memorandum continues to be important for several reasons. First, it echoes Serbian policies cited by British vice-consuls in their reports on the earlier Serbian administration of the districts of Monastir and U¨sku¨p after the Balkan Wars. It relates to policies that were enacted later by the communist government in Belgrade after World War II, toward Muslim citizens in Macedonia and Kosova. And it reflects the time it was written: 1937, just before World War II. In the memorandum Cˇubrilovic´ justifies the need to expel Albanians because they form “an Albanian wedge” that separates Serbs in the north from “their lands” in the Vardar basin. He explains that it is due to the presence of the Albanians that Serbs were slower to expand their influence in the nineteenth century when the Bulgarians were expanding theirs in Macedonia. He also notes that Albanians live along strategic borders, rivers, and battle sites in central Balkan lands. And just as Albanians were expelled from Nis¸ and Vranje after 1878, so they should be expelled from lands further south. As for world opinion, Cˇubrilovic´ notes that it has grown used to things far worse than this, and furthermore it is preoccupied, so this would not long be a cause for concern. At a time when Germany can expel tens of thousands of Jews and Russia can shift millions of people from one part of the continent to another, the evacuation of a few hundred thousand Albanians will not set off a world war.3 The most frightening part of the memorandum is the section that explains that to relocate a whole people from their lands “the first

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prerequisite is the creation of a suitable psychosis.” There must be policies and actions that make staying intolerable. Cˇubrilovic´ goes on to include the non-recognition of old land deeds, the ruthless collection of taxes, and the payment of all private and public debts. Again, these policies were followed earlier by Serbian administrators after the Balkan Wars and noted by British vice-consuls in their reports. In particular, Vice-Consul Greig noted that the Serbian prefect at Monastir was collecting taxes from ten years back4 and imposing exorbitant fines. Cˇubrilovic´ also advocates “health measures” like the pulling down of the encircling walls and high hedges around private homes. The Macedonians did this much later, in the 1980s. And Cˇubrilovic´ suggested harassing the Albanians through their religion by ill-treating their clergy and demolishing their cemeteries. Besides the state apparatus, Cˇubrilovic´ also advocated what he termed a “private initiative” to be involved in the expulsion of Albanians. Here he explained that he meant arming the Montenegrin colonists to “secretly assist” them to create a large-scale conflict with the Albanians. It would be ascribed to a clan conflict. Then “local riots could be incited” that would be bloodily suppressed by the local Montenegrins and Serbs. There remained one more method Serbia employed with great practical effect after 1878 – secretly razing Albanian villages and urban settlements to the ground.5 Cˇubrilovic´ also made the point that not just the poor, but also the middle class and the wealthy among the Albanians needed to be persecuted and driven out. His point was that the poor would follow them. This would be policy after World War II in both Kosova and Macedonia, as the following two examples from Kosova show. One Albanian teacher from Kosova told me that on the second visit from the UDBA, the Yugoslav State Security Police, he migrated to Turkey as he had been instructed. He had not wanted to leave, and Kosova was short of teachers, but he could not risk another interaction with the UDBA. Another Kosovar, from a wealthy family in Prishtina, told me the only time he saw his father cry was when the UDBA came and told him how much they would give for his home. He said he didn’t want to sell. Then we will come next week and give you half this much, he was told. He was forced to migrate to Turkey with his extended family.6

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But first, World War II came rapidly to Yugoslavia. Germany and its allies attacked in April 1941. Within ten days the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had fallen. The southern part of the country was taken, with Italy occupying Kosova and the northwest of Macedonia while Bulgaria occupied all the rest of Macedonia, including Skopje, and some of southern Serbia.

Mukaddes Hanım and Her Family Survive the War People at the migrant association told me about Mukaddes Hanım before I met her. She had worked as an elementary school teacher for years, but was now retired and she traveled. I had to wait until she came back from India before I could meet her and talk with her. I told her about my project of learning life stories of muhajir and we got along well. She invited me to her home to talk. I brought flowers and sweets, but the flowers were the most welcome. Mukaddes Hanım lived in Fatih, an older part of Istanbul, in an apartment that she had bought herself. That was quite an accomplishment for someone who had worked as an elementary school teacher, and I was impressed. Her apartment was full of photographs of members of her family – her brother, her sisters, her parents, and various nieces and nephews. I asked about her recent trip to India. She showed me photographs, including one of her on an elephant. She noted that the Taj Mahal was as beautiful as people had said. But the poverty in India had also reached her. She found the Ganges River filthy and worried about the people who lived in such conditions. But the colors of the clothing and food were striking. This reminded her she had prepared a meal for me. We had delicious squash soup, spinach bo¨rek, ko¨fte with potatoes, leeks with meat, cabbage salad, cucumbers, and carrots. As she made Turkish coffee after the meal, I asked her about being a muhajir, that is, an emigrant. ¨ sku¨p, how it was She began by talking about her family’s home in U the happiest time for her family. The garden had fruit trees – quince, pear, cherry, and apple. We would water them in the early evening. I would brush the stones until they shone. And the smell of the white flowers, like

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the ones you brought, were so sweet. It was across from the Isa Beg Medrese and Mosque. You had to go down to go into the house, but it had a very wide garden. Her father, who was Bosnian, had been a judge in the Muslim courts, and the family had moved to that house from Monastir in the south of Macedonia when Mukaddes was seven years old. She had started school early because her older sister, Hatice, was shy, so she went to school with ¨ sku¨p, her older sister. They went to the Santa Maria School for Girls in U named for the wife of King Alexander. It was only for Albanian and Turkish girls, but the teachers were Serbian. “‘Turkish garbage,’ they called us in Serbian,” said Mukaddes, who understood Serbian thanks to her father’s Bosnian. “They cursed us. One day a teacher asked me to get her a glass of water from the well. I went down and got it, but I spit in it, too.” Mukaddes went to that school for three years, and then to another school for two more years. But then war came to Yugoslavia and we started to be afraid. We lost my grandmother, my mother’s mother, then. But we did not have time to grieve because the war had begun. A week later – it was a Friday because my father was home – the siren blared. We went to the shelter. My father called the gardener, too, but he wouldn’t come down because my mother was covered. So he crouched under a pear tree. It was as if the earth was being destroyed with all the bombs. The noise filled our ears and made them ring. Then five minutes after the bombs had passed we looked out, and all we saw was clouds. We figured they had hit very close, maybe the Isa Beg Medrese. They had destroyed all that was across the street. There were wounded people and some had died. My father’s uncle lived across the street and his children came to stay with us. On our street was a Christian Macedonian woman, Baba Veliko. We all showed her respect. She told us to make sure that our father hid his weapons from the Bulgarians, for they had come. In the bombardment the Germans had come, and then the Bulgarians. My father had weapons, of course, but he had hidden them. He was planning to go to his hometown up north – the Bulgarians

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had passed an edict that all had to return to where they had come from – but before he could do this, the Bulgarians came one day when he was at work and I was at the store. They came looking for weapons, and when they left the house was all torn up. My father came home, took one look, and said, we will all go away together. We were eight people and we left for several days’ journey north to Taslica. Mukaddes Hanım said they stayed one year in Taslica, where her youngest sister was born. But there was no way to make money, and there was not enough food. Her mother would make a plate of bo¨rek and it would have to last all day for eight people. Sometimes the Italian soldiers gave them flour. But it was not enough. So they bought one cow, but it gave no milk. Then Mukaddes’ mother sold her necklace. She said, “When will I wear this?” With the money from the necklace they bought another cow that did give milk. Her mother made cheese and traded it to the soldiers for food. One day the cow grazed away into a different field and Mukaddes went after her. The soldiers started yelling at her, but she did not understand. All she knew was she had to get the cow back for her family. As she brought the cow back she realized what the soldiers had been yelling – mines, there were mines in that field. After a year her father knew they could not stay there any longer. He went north for work and found some, but he needed a place for his large family. He found it in a place by the railroad called Dervent with both Christians and Muslims. But then one day, when they had just moved there, Mukaddes’ uncle came and told them, “Your cow was stolen. The true owners want it back.” But all their money was gone. Mukaddes Hanım said she did not sleep all that night. The next day I took the cow to the place my uncle had said. The woman came and hugged the cow. Like a child, she hugged it. And the man cried. I said, “We have no guilt. We are many people. We took care of it.” The man stood and waited. Then he said, “I will leave the cow with you. But do not cut it up and do not sell it.”

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The Chetniks, largely Serbian fighters under Mihailovic´, would come, and there would be shooting. Then the Partisans, Yugoslav communist fighters under Tito, would come. And one day the Germans came when my sister was out in the street. My mother flew outside. She raised her arms and pointed at her daughter. They stopped. She took her daughter and fled back inside. At this point a neighbor from the apartment below knocked on the door. I said, “We were in Dervent.” We smiled and we all had tea, and then Mukaddes continued with the neighbor listening, too. In Dervent there was no water. We would have to go to the spring to get water. One day as I was carrying a pail of water back to the house, a Partisan on a bicycle knocked me down. Then he came back and hit me again and the pail went flying. I was out for the day. My mother took me to the hospital, and I still have the scar on my knee. I didn’t go to school for a week. The fighting continued with attacks from planes by the high school. There were so many wounded and body parts all over and all the blood. Just not on our street. Fighting is so awful. But all together we experienced it. It is a life lesson, just as poverty is. But then it was over. My father had no work and no salary ¨ sku¨p to our home, again. What would we do? We returned to U where our aunt was living. We were together in the winter. Then my aunt’s daughter said that a course would be offered in her school for teachers of Turkish by a teacher who had studied in Istanbul. “Mukaddes, would you like to come?” “Where else will I learn Turkish grammar?” We went, my older sister and myself. I had never thought of becoming a teacher. What I loved was forests. I wanted to be a forestry engineer. I loved nature. But I took the course, and at the end they had us read from Birlik, the Turkish newspaper, as an exam. Those who were high school graduates or who had comparable study could apply for positions then. I never knew I would love the profession of teaching so much. I could never just sit at a table with a paper and pencil. But

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to look in children’s eyes and sense how much they wanted to learn – this made me very happy. I taught for three years in U¨sku¨p at Tefeyyu¨z School. ¨ sku¨p. It was founded in Tefeyyu¨z School is the oldest Turkish school in U 1884 and closed in 1912, then it was opened again on 21 December 1944 and continues to this day. In the 1990s minorities in Macedonia were allowed to select one day as their special day of the year when they did not work. Turks chose 21 December, when teaching in Turkish was again permitted.7 Mukaddes taught young boys and was very happy in her teaching. She especially liked working for the principal, Hizir Idris, who had been educated in Turkey. But when they replaced him with a man who was a member of the Communist Party, things started to go downhill. One day there were visiting teachers from Turkey, and the next day a Party member told Mukaddes that she had not been invited to meet them. This other woman told Mukaddes that if she went to Turkey there would be so many teachers that she would not even be a worker, she would not even collect garbage. Mukaddes answered back that clearly the woman was not a good communist if she looked down on workers. And she said she would be happy to collect garbage in Turkey. Unfortunately she said this in front of the children. The other woman made a complaint to have Mukaddes thrown out of work. The Party gathered, but the good Party members stood up for Mukaddes and said what an excellent teacher she was. So although she was expelled from the school she was given another teaching job. ¨ sku¨p and That summer Mukaddes went to the Turkish consul in U asked for a permanent visa for her passport. He said he should not do this, but she cried and so he gave in, but told her not to tell anyone. The next fall on the first day of school Mukaddes went to her new class and taught. Then she went home and took her suitcase to the train station. Many people were leaving and they thought she was just saying goodbye to them, or riding to the first stop. Her father had given her extra money in case there were problems. But she was on pins and needles until they got to the border. When she arrived in Turkey, in Istanbul at Sirkeci Station, by chance there was a teaching colleague and a neighbor there. She had come ¨ sku¨p were arriving. wondering if any of her old friends from U

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The woman from downstairs explained to me. “That is how it was in the past. People missed each other.” Mukaddes nodded and continued. I stayed with her for several days in Laleli, and then with my great aunt who was ill in Usku¨dar. My mother came in the summer. And then the whole family arrived and we rented a home on Halic
Avenue. My father got work at the Vaqf. He knew Ottoman Turkish well and all the laws since he had been a judge. She explained how her siblings went to university and how she eventually got permission to teach. All the while she had been putting all her earning into the family fund for her siblings, but her mother insisted she wanted her to keep them. Did my mother think I needed a trousseau? Then a sister-inlaw told me to put my money in the bank. And so slowly it grew. I saved everything. I gave private lessons, too. And then finally, with borrowing from my brother and brother-in-law – I paid them back – and from the bank, I bought this apartment. Everyone was surprised. She must have gotten gold from her mother, they said. But a home is so important. For us a home is all. And here it is close to everything in Istanbul’s center. ¨ sku¨p, for family life, with the garden But as for the home in U . . . My father had eight kinds of fruit. And from the far side of the house, from the lilac trees, and from the stones that shone, I planted the white flowers, s¸ebboy, that smell so sweet.

Remembering the Yu¨cel Organization and Its Leaders The economy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had not been good in the last years of the 1930s. The Muslims in U¨sku¨p started an organization called Yardım Cemiyeti, the “Assistance Society,” in 1938, but the Germans closed it when they took over in 1941. Food, coal, and other necessities of life were rationed in U¨sku¨p during the Bulgarian occupation. Local people were given ration papers, but when Turks tried to collect, the Bulgarian authorities enjoyed insulting them rather than filling their requests. Muslims were also sent on forced labor brigades to Bulgaria to build roads and tunnels.

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In reaction to this, the Muslim community founded another group in 1941 to cope with the difficulties of the Bulgarian occupation. This evolved into a group concerned with protecting their Turkish values and language as well. The younger men in this organization became interested in Turkish ideals of Republican Turkey. They started reading speeches by Atatu¨rk and writings of Ziya Go¨kalp, Namık Kemal, and Mehmet Akıf.8 Theirs was a secret organization9 and they swore allegiance on the Qur’an, the flag, and the pistol to protect Turkish values with their lives. They set up a lending library and passed around books, and thereby some people learned the Latin script for Turkish. In 1943, they began to develop a relationship with a sympathetic Turkish consul in Skopje, through whom they received more books. The leaders were among the best-educated Muslims in Macedonia at the time, although the membership included people from varied professions, including merchants, and craftsmen, tailors, and barbers who worked in the Old Bazaar.

Figure 10

Mukaddes Hanım surrounded by her students in Turkey

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The president of the organization, S¸uayb Aziz Ishak, had studied at ¨ sku¨p until 1930. His father, Aziz the Ataullah Efendi Medrese in U Efendi, had a shop near the bedistan in the Old Bazaar. S¸uayb Aziz continued his studies at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and graduated second in his class. He was married with four children. But since he had come back from Egypt, he had not been able to find a position and so was working in farming. ¨ sku¨p The treasurer, Ali Abdurrahman Ali, was from an old U family that held the vakf, or foundation trust, of the Kurs¸unlu Han. He was a publisher and began the Birlik newspaper in 1944, the first ¨ sku¨p. It would continue Turkish newspaper to use Latin letters in U for 60 years, until 2004. He was outgoing and full of energy. He, too, was married. ¨ mer Another member of the Executive Committee was Nazmi O Yakup, who had gone to Serbian schools and had graduated from the Belgrade Law Faculty. He had worked on the constitution of the organization and was a teacher as well as a judge. And he was newly married in early 1947. Then there was Adem Ali Adem, who was a saddlemaker in the Old Bazaar. He was solid and dependable, of calm temperament. He was concerned with security for the organization. These were the top leaders. There were many members in U¨sku¨p and in Ko¨pru¨lu¨ (Veles), another city in Macedonia. They started the first Turkish language radio station. And when they saw the need for teachers, it was they who organized teacher training courses using the new Latin alphabet for Turkish. This provided trained teachers and textbooks for 60 Turkish schools across Macedonia as soon as education in Turkish was permitted in 1944– 5. These are all cultural contributions. However, the initial secrecy of the organization and the connections to the Turkish consul in U¨sku¨p, as well as a later visit to the Turkish ambassador in Belgrade, raised suspicions. Indeed, it was the Turkish ambassador who named them the Yu¨cel Tes¸kilati, that is, the “eminent organization.” What was the relation of this group to the Republic of Turkey? Yugoslavia’s relation to Turkey was none too warm in 1947, when Yugoslavia was still friends with the Stalinist Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had abrogated its 1924 Treaty with Turkey, which was one of the reasons Turkey had sought to join NATO.

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But in truth, Turkey had no particular relation with the Yu¨celciler, as members of the organization were called. The Yu¨celciler looked up to Turkey for cultural reasons, but politically Turkey then was under aging President Ino¨nu¨, who did not have the courage after World War II to take on causes like the Turks in Macedonia. Geographically they were not connected. In August 1947 the Yugoslav State Security Police began to arrest the leaders of the Yu¨celciler. They arrested 17 people in U¨sku¨p, to the surprise and horror of the local Muslim community. What could the local Turkish community do? Their top leaders had been arrested. Whom could they turn to? Clearly the communists were against their Muslim leaders, as well. In 1946 Yugoslavia had closed the sheriat courts and religious education had been made illegal. Teaching children in mosques would become a criminal offense in 1950, and the dervish orders would be closed in 1952. People lived in fear. The trial of the leaders of the Yu¨cel organization was held in midJanuary 1948. That same week there were National Front meetings held in the neighborhoods of those who had been arrested and people who did not attend were labeled as imperialists. In this way there was additional psychological pressure put on the community.10 The trial began on 19 January 1948. It was even broadcast on loudspeakers for people to hear in the streets in front of the courthouse. The judge was Panta Marina, head of the Skopje Regional Court, and the Prosecutor was Blagoj Popovski. The accusations were that they were terrorists and spies, but they had killed no one. At the end of the five days that the trial lasted, it was clear that they had been tortured. On 25 January 1948, the court’s decision was read. S¸uayb Aziz, Ali ¨ mer, and Adem Ali were condemned to be Abdurrahman, Nazmi O executed. Despite the paucity of evidence and falsity of the charges, the decision was greeted in the courtroom with cheers. Clearly, this was contrived theater. The sentences for the remaining 13 in the First Group of 17 arrested were read out. Four were condemned to 20 years of imprisonment; they included a teacher, a tailor, a lathe-turner, a judge, and a saddler. Two professors were condemned to 15 years of imprisonment. Three – a grocer, a barber, and a carpenter – were condemned to 12 years of imprisonment.

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A seller of herbs got 11 years, a merchant ten years, and a teacher eight years. They were sent back to different prisons while those condemned to death were sent to the Idrisova Prison. All that is known about their execution is that a truck took them to the village of Sus¸itsa and there they were executed. No one knows to this day where they were buried. The mother of one of the condemned went as high as Tito to try to get the order of execution rescinded, but to no avail. Her hair turned white overnight from grief at the loss of her son.11 And then it started all over again in May 1948 with the Second Group of 28 who were arrested, tried, and sentenced, with sentences ranging from one year to nine years in prison and at hard labor. And then the Third Group of 18 were arrested, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned. So all told, 64 Turks were arrested, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned on these empty charges. This was state terror, plain and simple.12 Men from all segments of Muslim society had been pulled in. Their families suffered deeply. It is fair to say it pushed the community over the edge. The response to the arrests and executions of Yu¨cel members, along with continuing decrees against Muslim practices, was migration to Turkey. In 1951 the wearing of the veil was made illegal. Muslim women had worn a light ferace that covered half their face and a long shawl that covered their hair in public. If they continued to wear this, their husbands would be expelled from their work and there could be fines. It was difficult, especially for older women, to change overnight; some women did not go out at all, or only went out after dark. And Muslims were forced to work on Fridays, the day of prayer, as well as on Muslim holidays. They did not have time to pray at noon, in any case, and the call to prayer was not allowed outside the mosque. It may seem that Yugoslavia’s policies were at cross purposes. Why allow minority Turkish schools and then execute and imprison minority Turkish leaders in 1948? The difference was that Yugoslavia allowed “cultural practices” like minority language classes and theater, but not minority leaders, especially Muslim ones with any power. The late 1940s in Yugoslavia were a time of political severity against Muslim leaders in Sarajevo, Skopje, and, somewhat later, in Prizren. The charges usually included that these leaders had connections or aspirations with powers outside Yugoslavia and therefore were dangerous.

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In 1950 a court ruled that the lengthy prison sentences for political reasons would be shortened to seven years. Tito had broken with Stalin and Yugoslavia’s policies were softening toward Turkey. That still left many Balkan Muslims in Yugoslav prisons for more years in the 1950s. But when emigration to Turkey became a possibility in 1953 through the Free Migration Act, it was not so much a question anymore. As soon as their family member got out of prison, the whole family emigrated to Turkey.

Hacer Abla and the Turkish Theater ¨ mer, Hacer Abla, remembered the one visit to her The wife of Nazmi O husband in prison. She had gone with her in-laws and first they were behind the screen. When they saw Nazmi O¨mer, they all began to cry. He had been in prison for several months and the tension had been devastating. Hacer Abla was holding her three-month-old daughter in her arms. It was the first time her husband had seen his daughter. It would be the last. Hacer Abla reported that he looked at them all crying and told them not to cry. “I am going, but behind me I entrust you to the millions of sisters and brothers [meaning Turkey]. Long live Atatu¨rk’s Turkey! Long live Turkey!” As he said this the guards reached out, took him by the arms, and led him away. Hacer Abla continued. “I never saw him again. Nor did I see his grave. Nor do I know where they buried him.”13 How Hacer Abla got through the next months up to the trial and the sentence to execution in January 1948 I do not know. It probably helped some that she had her infant daughter to care for. But at the same time, it had to have been excruciating, fearing that her daughter would never know her father. Further, Hacer Abla was close to her own father. Hacer Abla’s father was arrested in May 1948 as a member of Yu¨cel. He was tried and sentenced to ten years in prison. Probably at this time she returned from her in-laws to her mother’s home, to live with her mother again and keep her company. What would be her life now as a young widow with a very young daughter? Hacer Abla did what she had always done. She sewed, and sewed beautifully. And she also took to sewing for a new group in U¨sku¨p, the National Minorities Theater, which was begun in 1949 and put on plays in Turkish and Albanian. A less auspicious time for the founding of a

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theater cannot be imagined, and yet there had been a theater in Skopje since 1906.14 U¨sku¨p’s theater had been founded in Ottoman times through the influence of the theater in Salonika. Its stage had been imported from Germany. In keeping with the social norms of the times, men and women had sat in separate sections. There had been fountains outside, a section where people could sit and drink coffee, and its seating capacity was greater than that of the theater in Belgrade.15 Traveling companies had performed there, including opera, as well as some productions by young Ottomans like S¸emsettin Sami Bey and Kemal Bey. Conferences and poetry readings also took place in the theater beside the Vardar River. In the interwar period, the King Alexander high school had used the theater for gatherings in Serbian, and it had also been used for Islamic holiday festivals. However, after World War II, the theater was taken over as the Macedonian People’s Theater for Slavic productions. Yet with the newly opened Turkish schools after World War II, school programs and recitations expanded to play productions. A new Turkish cultural association, Yeni Yol, founded in the spring of 1948, combined with a youth theater. In 1949 they got together with an Albanian theater group to form The Minority Theater. The Turkish Theater’s first production was A Suspicious Character, by Branislav Nusic´, translated into Turkish. It was performed in the salon of the Macedonian People’s Theater in July 1950. This play by a Vlach playwright in Serbian, based on Gogol’s The Inspector-General, was an interesting initial choice. In the Macedonian newspaper, Nova Makedonja, it was deemed a success and the Turkish director and actors were commended.16 The first year the Turkish Theater performed Chekov’s The Bear and Nusic´’s A Suspicious Character in six cities in Macedonia, as well as Chekov’s The Marriage Proposal. The second season they performed three more plays by Vlach playwright Nusic´, translated from Serbian into Turkish. Nusic´ had worked in Skopje earlier in the century and his work was familiar to people there. The third year they added Molie`re’s The Imaginary Invalid, performed to an audience of 800, and another play by Nusic´, as well as Bora Stankovic´’s Kos¸tana, a folk story with music and songs. Stankovic´ was a Serb from Vranje in south Serbia. Kos¸tana is a popular play that had been made into a movie and was well known in the region. Hacer Abla would have sewed costumes for many of these performances.

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Translation of plays into Turkish was a problem for the young theater group. With so many of the teachers and educated leaders in prison, the director, Abdus¸ Hu¨seyin, got permission to have some of the prisoners work on translations of plays for the Minority Theater from prison. In 1953 as a sign of its success, the Minority Theater was given a building in which to perform on the edge of the old market area in Skopje. They had to share the building with a cinema and a library, and the cinema in particular caused sound problems. Still, having a place was an advantage, and there was seating for 650. With its own building, however, for the first time a Slavic Macedonian was appointed to direct some of the productions, instead of Abdus¸ Hu¨seyin, who had directed almost all of the productions since its founding. But a continuing problem was finding female actors, since this was not an activity that most Turkish families would consider appropriate. They must have noticed the attractive young widow who had been working as a seamstress. Would she be willing to try out as an actor? Hacer Abla had of course no experience whatsoever in acting. But her husband was dead and her father was in prison. Who would object? Probably her in-laws. But she had moved back to her parents’ home to keep her mother company now that her father was in prison, so she had more freedom. Hacer Abla did begin to act on the stage of the National Minorities Theater. She turned out to be a most gifted actor. For several years she acted, including major roles, from a young American woman in a play by Pearl Buck, to a Yo¨ru¨k17 mother whose child was taken in a Turkish tragedy. She became well known in Skopje for her performances onstage – so much so that she was able to get a commutation of the prison sentence for her father. But 1953 was also the beginning of the major emigration of Turks from Skopje and to Turkey. The community had never felt safe since the execution of its young leaders in 1948. Along with policies against Muslim religious observance and the refusal to hire people who were not Party members, the ongoing insecurity had taken its toll. Scholars cite financial, social, religious, and patriotic reasons for leaving.18 And once people started leaving, that fact led others to leave as family members joined other family members. By the mid-1950s the departure of so many Turks called into question the fledgling Turkish Theater. Would it be able to maintain

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itself as a professional theater?19 From multiple productions per year in the early and mid-1950s, the annual productions declined in number and variety to 1960, when all four productions were directed by Slavs and included very few actors. They produced more children’s shows. Did this represent a dearth of adult Turkish actors? Had many of the Turkish actors left Macedonia for Turkey, as Hacer Abla did when her father was released from prison? In fact, the Turkish Theater would continue, and it continues to this day. But it would go through a decline in both actors and audiences with migration to Turkey from Macedonia in the 1950s and early 1960s. Still, Hacer Abla would return decades later for a visit to the Turkish Theatre in Skopje to well-deserved acclaim.

Kemal Hakimog˘lu Cries for His Classmates When I did my research in Istanbul in 2008 and later, I wondered if there would be any Yu¨celciler still alive. They would be most mature by then. I was told there were very few. And that is how I eventually found myself on the way to visit Kemal Hakimog˘lu, who lived with his daughter in Bakırko¨y, a suburb of Istanbul on the Marmara Sea. Kemal Bey was born in U¨sku¨p, as was his father before him. His grandfather had been a judge, a hakim, and thus he took the surname hakimog˘lu, “son of a judge.” Kemal Bey was born in 1923, the same year as Hacer Abla, and grew up in the neighborhood of Kuruc
es¸me near the Tahtako¨pru¨, the Wooden Bridge, by Pikomahalle where Slavs lived. His mother’s family was Albanian, from Gjakova in Kosova. They had had a salt factory, but then the Serbs had said that Muslims there could not be merchants and had made them sell out and leave. They had come to near U¨sku¨p where his mother was born. His grandfather had been Bektashi – a Sufi order that was widespread among Albanians. Kemal Bey had gone to Serbian elementary and middle schools in ¨ sku¨p. But he had also gone to a mescid, a mosque, where he had studied U religion and Ottoman Turkish with a hoja, a Muslim cleric. I asked him what it was like going to Serbian schools with Macedonian Slavs. He said that the books were all against the Turks and accused them of all sorts of abuses. The teachers did, too. As he reported, “Our fellow students would say to us Turks accusingly, ‘What you must have done!’”

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Kemal Bey added that the Serbs had a fanaticism, a nationalistic fanaticism, and that the Hungarians had this, too. “As for us Muslims, we do not push our religion on you. We say, ‘This [our religion, Islam] is ours, you can keep yours, too.’ Now the Bosnians were Bogomils, and they became Muslim. But not by the sword.” “But there was much oppression against us,” continued Kemal Bey. The Slavs spoke of a hill of skulls that we were supposed to have made from the local brigands. But they did much worse to us in Vranya and Nis¸. [This is where the Serbs burned down Albanian villages in the 1877– 8 war.] So many were killed and so many were forced to flee. The Ottoman Army gave them food during difficult times. And there were settlements for refugees [muhajir mahallesi ] all over. Indeed there were muhajir mahallesi in all the main cities of Rumeli after that war. Then it seemed Kemal Bey had had enough of the depressing fate of Muslims in the Balkans for a time. He asked me if I knew of Gu¨l Baba in Hungary. “Yes,” I said, “in Budapest, there is the mausoleum of Gu¨l Baba, the Muslim Sufi Baba who got the farthest north in Europe.” He smiled. Did I know that Gu¨l Baba was from Gjakova? “No,” I said, astounded. I had visited it. (Gu¨l Baba means “Father Rose.”) Actually, most people think Gu¨l Baba, who died in 1541 in Buda, was a Sufi, a Bektashi from Sivas in Anatolia who traveled with Sultan Su¨leyman. His mausoleum in Buda, where he had died and was buried, was later turned into a Catholic chapel for a while, but then restored as a Muslim site in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Turkish government restored it in 1960 and again in the 1990s. But I quite liked the idea that Gu¨l Baba was from Gjakova like Kemal Bey’s mother’s family. Meanwhile Kemal Bey had started looking at the booklet on the Yu¨cel organization that I had brought. It had photographs on the cover of the members who had been executed, and inside had photographs of all the members who had been arrested, tried, and condemned to prison terms. Kemal Bey started looking at the photographs from right to left on the cover, as if he were reading Ottoman. “These were my school friends!” he said with surprise. “Adem Shemo!” I had not heard Adem Ali Adem referred to that way before.

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But by the time he got to the one on the farthest left, he said, “S¸uayb, he was older than me.” Clearly he had never seen the photographs or the booklet before. He added, “The Yu¨celciler were not a weapons organization, they were more for self-protection.” I said it was important to talk with people who knew such things. And that is why I wanted to meet him and talk with him. I explained that what I was doing was called so¨zlu¨ tarih, or “oral history.” “No,” he corrected me, “What you are doing is canlı tarih,” that is, “living history.” “How did you become a member of the Yu¨celciler?” I asked him. My friend Refik and I were together one day. He told me that there was a meeting at his home that afternoon. It was a big home. S¸uayb understood that the Germans would leave. [The Germans had returned, but when they left, that would leave only the Bulgarians who especially disliked the Turks.] They had decided in times of trouble to go in the first doorway, to get out of the street, and to help each other. Later, when the Macedonians came to power, they accused us of doing things. But we just tried to protect ourselves. They said, “You became organized.” “No, it was just a means to survive.” The Macedonians sentenced us to work in the lead mines for three months. And in the street we had to look behind us all the time [after the communists came to power]. Who was lurking there? And even with young children, they would ask, “Who visited your home last night?” The child would say that his uncle had come. “And what did he say?” “He said, ‘From Tito all this misfortune came upon us.’” Then the uncle would be called in for questioning. I recalled what Kemal Bey had said earlier about the time of the king in the interwar period. Kemal Bey reiterated that that time had not been so bad. But then he added that Mihailovic´ (the Serbian General in charge of the Chetniks) killed Muslims. Mihailovic´ operated more in Herzegovina, but there were Chetnik groups during World War II that went after different groups. For example, Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu had mentioned that his mother’s family had lost 17 members in one night during the war. This wanton killing during the war deeply traumatized people. And there was little respite with the new communist regime.

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Kemal Bey noted that immediately after the war, Our grocery store was nationalized. It was in a good neighborhood for business, near the bit pazarı. It was taken from us. Now it is a ko¨fteci, a restaurant, in a good part of town. In 1946 and again in 1948 properties were nationalized in keeping with communist ideology. And there was no work for us there. Immediately after mentioning the loss of his family’s commercial property, Kemal Bey noted that they had emigrated in 1953 to Istanbul. They had relatives there. But we had a rough time here, too, with many difficulties. There was a small stipend for my father from his time in the Ottoman army. He had been six years in Yemen. Then he came back to Macedonia for a few years only. And he was taken to fight in Montenegro. And then there was a rebellion against the Turks in Macedonia. There were five brothers, many of whom were killed in the Balkan Wars. We had grain and helped the poor. But then we had to leave, too. Our family had a written form from the British Consul. We were sent to a village called Radis¸an. Along the road there were many dead. My father showed the villagers the paper and thankfully they let us through. But warfare is such a bad thing. In the Balkan War, the Bulgarians, the Serbs, and the Macedonians fought over U¨sku¨p. During World War I there was one year of fighting, then an agreement. The Serbs had fought for 11 months with the Bulgarians before surrendering the city. My mother’s brother had come to Istanbul in 1935. We came by train in 1953, from U¨sku¨p to Salonika, from Trakya to Edirne, and then on to Istanbul. I asked where they stayed when they first came to Istanbul. “We stayed with our uncle in Laleli for one to two years. Then we lived in Fatih from 1955 to 1964. After that we came to Bakırko¨y in the mid-1960s.” I asked Kemal Bey if he had been a member of the early dernek, that is, of the Vardarlılar Yardımlama Cemiyeti, the “Society for Assistance of People of the Vardar”? Yes, he had, since his uncle was a member. And I

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¨ sku¨p. “We had come to detest it there,” he asked him if he missed U answered. “There was so much oppression and pressure. We had no other place to go. So we came here. And there weren’t so many educated Turks among us. Our brother-in-law,” he mentioned. But as he said this, Kemal Bey was back going through the booklet on the Yu¨celciler. Kemal Bey had started with the photographs inside the booklet. When I realized what he was doing, I called attention to his own photograph, for he had been a member, and had been arrested, tried, and condemned to prison. He was not at all interested. Rather, he stopped at the photographs of Yu¨celciler on the next page. “Hu¨seyin Baykal – we ¨ sku¨p. His father was urbane. went to religious lessons together in U He was no yobaz – no narrow religious bigot.’” “Wasn’t Hu¨seyin a hafiz?” I asked. “Yes, and a poet,” responded Kemal Bey. Then, as Kemal Bey looked through the photographs of the Yucelciler who had been imprisoned, from back to front of the booklet, he began to cry. He kept turning the pages slowly. “They are all dead.” Then he came to those with long prison sentences. “Fazli, he went to the Tefeyyu¨z School. He knew Albanian, he knew French.” And he had been sentenced to 16 years in prison. He arrived at the front pages of the booklet. “S¸efik, he was much tortured. It is so hard to live amidst racism.” S¸efik was a saddler who had been condemned to 20 years in prison. I asked Kemal Bey why Turkey had not helped the Turks in Macedonia. He answered, “It was the time of Stalin. With Russia, Turkey could do nothing.” Kemal Bey was right. Tito was still in league with Stalin until halfway through 1948. Muslim organizations were targeted in Sarajevo, in U¨sku¨p, and in Prizren, as were people considered anti-Stalinists. Then I changed the topic. I asked why the Rumeli Tu¨rkleri Derneg˘i was so well organized. Kemal Bey said that was due to their being all ¨ sku¨p. “There were Turkish nationalists in U¨sku¨p, while this sorts in U was not so in Prizren. There was Yahya Kemal, the poet of U¨sku¨p. And there were all sorts of characters. But there were no spies,” he added. “There were no enemies of the homeland. And there were such strong family ties.” Earlier Kemal Bey had mentioned how things had changed there with materialism growing and family bonds diminishing. But still they are strong. I pointed out that Nevin Hanım, Kemal Bey’s

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daughter, takes care of him. “Yes,” he nodded. “You are most fortunate,” I added. She smiled. “Once when I was in a restaurant,” said Kemal Bey, “a man asked where I was from. ‘U¨sku¨p,’ I said. He was a Turk who had been a soldier, a sergeant there. He said that there was a sort of terbiye, upbringing, there that was not found anywhere else. A sort of family upbringing. For ¨ sku¨p in Ottoman times there were no women of the example, in U streets.” Nevin Hanım explained, “He means prostitutes.” That actually had continued in much later times. When international troops had come to Macedonia after the Kosova War in 1999, there were still no Muslim prostitutes. Kemal Bey continued. “The Christians also had strong family ties.” Earlier he said that they had gotten along with the Macedonians around them. ¨ sku¨p?” He answered, “It is I asked him, “What is so special about U the center of the roads in the Balkans. People from Belgrade go through it. From Kosova they go to it, and across it to Albania, and down to Selanik.” “When you came to Istanbul, was your Turkish different?” I asked. Kemal Bey smiled. “Yes, we spoke not such good Turkish. We would say, ‘Hacan geldin?’ Instead of ‘Ne zaman geldin?’ Some say it is like the Black Sea dialect.” Nevin Hanım added that her aunt still speaks that way. “She never changed her Turkish here. For example, ‘N’apasun?’ she would say, instead of the more standard Turkish, ‘Ne yapıyorsun?’” That reminded me of the Turkish dialect of the actors on the television program Elveda Rumeli, and I mentioned this. “Yes,” said Nervin Hanım. Elveda Rumeli was the most popular television series that year, broadcast Monday evenings on ATV. The name meant “Farewell Rumeli,” and it was set in Macedonia in 1896, about a Muslim village family of five daughters, like a Muslim Fiddler on the Roof. The family spoke in Rumeli Turkish dialect, or at least the Turkish actors tried to do so. Much to the surprise of the Ankara-based director, when he had looked for local actors to save funds he had come across the Turkish Theatre in Skopje, where he had found highly professional actors who of course knew the local dialect of Turkish perfectly. So the cast was a mixture of actors from Turkey who had to work on the dialect and actors from Macedonia who already knew the local Turkish dialect.

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I mentioned that I thought all the girls from the Black Sea area of Turkey were in love with Aleks. Now Aleks was an important young male character on the television program who happened to be from Skopje. Kemal Bey interjected, “Aleks is the grandson of your aunt,” he informed his daughter Nermin. “He is handsome,” I added. I asked Nermin Hanım if she liked the series. “Yes, it is very well presented and acted.” Then she added, “The Turks like it, too.” “And who do you like best among the actors?” I asked her. “Zarife,” she ¨ sku¨p.” Indeed, Zarife was a member of the responded. “She is from U Turkish Theater in Skopje. I had met her on the trip to Macedonia that I had taken with the Rumeli Dernek the previous spring and had seen her working on the series on location in Bitola. I told Nermin Hanım how pretty and professional Zarife was in person. I asked both Nermin Hanım and Kemal Bey for their judgements about dialect on the program. “Of course those from there do better. But of the others [Turkish actors from Anatolia], Vahide does pretty well.” “How about Su¨tcu¨ Ramiz?” I asked. This is the father, the Zero ¨ zyag˘cılar. “As Mostel of the series, an excellent Turkish actor, Erdal O for his Rumeli dialect,” Kemal Bey said, “it was not so good at the start, but it is getting better.” I later learned that this Turkish actor had actually gone to the Rumeli Dernek to try to learn the dialect from one of the presidents of the dernek, whose parents were from Skopje. In asking Kemal Bey and Nermin Hanım these questions I was turning the tables, for usually Rumeli people are criticized for their non-standard Turkish dialect. But here they could criticize Turks for their inability to master their Rumeli dialect for performance. I changed the topic back to the Rumeli Dernek. I asked Kemal Bey what made the association so active. Had the experience of being part of the Yu¨cel organization helped? Kemal Bey saw no connection. “Rather,” he said, “in the time of the King [Alexander of Yugoslavia], during Ramadan, there was always much giving and assistance to those in need. We gave 30 to 40 kurban to the poor. That is, 30 to 40 animals were sacrificed and their meat given to the poor.” He added, “Why, I give two kurban each year and the meat is given out to those in need.” In essence, Kemal Bey had defined the activity of the Rumeli Dernek in terms of giving to those in need, and that it had a long tradition from ¨ sku¨p. From Ottoman times, it had been carried on. This was U

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something that I had found true of the Rumeli Dernek to the present day in a remarkable way. I followed up on this by asking if the people in the muhajir mahallesi, the emigrant neighborhood, in U¨sku¨p needed help. He responded, “The Serbs had forced those who lived in Vranja and Nis¸ out. The Ottomans had made small houses for them all in a row [on the south side of the Vardar River in U¨sku¨p]. But then they were forced to emigrate again [in the Balkan War]. There was continuous forced migration. ‘Go away from here,’ they kept saying.” “We are not dogs, though. None of us were in politics. It was all pressure and economic oppression. And we had little education. Only government schools. When we did not pass the exams [in Serbian] they said, ‘You are lucky to go through elementary and middle school.’ There was Rankovic´20 who hated the Albanians and forced them to leave.” ¨ sku¨p?” I asked. “Three or four times,” he “Did you ever go back to U said. “My mother still had relatives there. I was 32 years old when I came. But the racism of the Slavs.” Kemal Bey shook his head as he said this. “The Greeks have it, too, and they are half-Turk.” People were at the door to see Kemal Bey and his daughter. I looked at the clock. The time had flown. I had had three cups of tea and some sweets. Nermin Hanım started to wrap up some bo¨rek for my husband. “Thank you, but you don’t need to.” “No, we will,” and she wrapped it up. “It is delicious,” I said. I thanked them both. ¨ sku¨p I was fortunate to meet one of the last of the Yu¨celciler from U and his loving daughter.

PART II TAKING THE PLUNGE TO A NEW HOMELAND

People from the central Balkans are not a seafaring people. So when they described migrating to Istanbul as “plunging in the sea,” it implied a great unknown and taking an action that was most frightening to them. Certainly they had heard of Istanbul, and some had grandfathers who had gone there in Ottoman times. But that was several wars ago, before 1912, and their grandfathers had gone to study or for a limited period of time and then come home to Rumeli. What they or their families were contemplating was much different. They were planning to leave the homes in Skopje that they had known all their lives. They were planning to leave all that was familiar in Macedonia. They were planning to move to a place they had never seen before and start over. This took consummate courage, but pushing them was the fear that the situation in Skopje would only get worse. As Muslims under Serbian and then Yugoslav rule since 1912, they had been an unwelcome minority to the central power in Belgrade. Vaso Cˇubrilovic´ had written a second memorandum in 1944 advocating the expulsion of national minorities in Yugoslavia, including those in Kosova and Macedonia.1 As described in the first part of this book, the Muslims had pulled together after 1912 to nurture each other and their customs and values. But the dislocations, civil war, and Bulgarian occupation of World War II in southern Yugoslavia, followed by the communist takeover in 1944 and subsequent secularization, had affected their ways of life. The arrests,

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convictions, executions, and imprisonments of many Muslim leaders in 1948 in Skopje had destroyed what was left of many Muslims’ sense of security. And so, when Yugoslavia signed a treaty with Turkey in the early 1950s that allowed people who would call themselves Turks to leave Yugoslavia for Turkey, tens of thousands of Muslims did so. But could future generations understand what such a leaving and starting over entailed? What did it mean to come from the Balkans and start all over in Istanbul in the 1950s?

“One Suitcase, One Trunk” – Bir Kofer, Bir Sandık It was a commemorative event so simple – people arriving in the main train station of Istanbul – why had no one thought of it earlier? And yet they had not. It took the wisdom of Nezih Liman of the Kosova Prizren Association in Istanbul to see the power of an old trunk – he had one from the early 1950s – and the potency of public ceremony. He could see that the younger generations were losing the sense of what migration from the Balkans had meant to their parents or grandparents. And so he proposed a public re-enactment, “One Suitcase, One Trunk,” named after a line of poetry by a Rumeli poet. It first took place in 2009, and it has taken place annually ever since. The idea was that families – including those who had actually migrated from the Balkans, their children, and their children’s children – would gather in Sirkeci, the main train station in Istanbul. More specifically, they included people from the different Balkan immigrant hometown associations, so there was another level of organization to make sure word got out by telephone, by mail, through media, and electronically. People from the hometown associations of different cities in the Balkans – of Prizren, of Prishtina, of Ipek, of Gostivar, of Rumeli, ¨ sku¨p, of Sarajevo, of Deliorman, of Gu¨lmu¨lcine, and of Selanik – of U would all come and sit shoulder to shoulder in the Sirkeci train station, waiting. Melancholic Rumeli music played in the background as hundreds of people waited, sitting close together. In front of them was a stage-like area whose background was covered with a black cloth, and to the right were the tracks of a main train line. Suddenly in the distance was the sound of the train whistle. At the sound of the train, people waved Turkish flags, red with the white crescent and white star.

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Then the train appeared on the tracks. In it were people at the windows on the side by the seated crowd. Some waved shyly from the windows, but they did not smile. The train slowly came to a halt by the stage area. Two men, dressed in the clothing of the 1950s with the hats of the times, carried a big trunk down the steps of the train car. Behind them came the rest of the family. The women all wore dresses and had hats or scarves tied back in the old way. They had old style purses and no makeup. What was most impressive was the seriousness. They got off the train and walked as a family into the station toward the stage, turning their backs to the crowd, and then stopped when they faced the black cloth of the stage. Then all together they turned their bodies in profile, and their heads they turned at once toward the seated crowd. They were a family of seven, along with others, including a young man with the white felt brimless hat typical of Albanians on his head. They personified those who had left their homes in Rumeli. At the moment they turned their heads a man in modern dress began reciting an impassioned poem in Turkish. It was the poem by the Prizren poet Zeynel Bektac
from which the title of the event was taken. One Suitcase, One Trunk Like being ripped from the veins of a tree Like the melancholy of a sad folk song Like longing for a half-played children’s game With our sealed glances looking back We set off hungry and barefoot, One suitcase, one trunk. Our insides twisted and stunted Are those waving wet handkerchiefs? Was it our hearts that without knowing We set off. Without bidding farewell to the land of our birth Without taking our fill of the land of our birth

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Our homeland is Rumeli Our crochet, our embroidery Rumeli Our vineyards and gardens Our green clad mountains Our stone-patterned walkways Our lily- and honeysuckle-scented streets All that is truly us, our core With one suitcase, one trunk Our fate was to live far from home For this we have Rumeli folk songs That are more moving to us now For this our eyes are still moist For this our memories No matter how many years shall pass As a blade of grass turns green each day Our yearning grows, it winds up within us Our heart is Rumeli ah Rumeli when said it stays Such a love ahh! One day we looked and At Sirkeci Station appeared to our eyes With one suitcase, one trunk A whole new hope we embraced and held [. . .]2 At that moment the black curtain at the back opened and smoke enveloped all the people who had descended from the train. Suddenly others dressed in clothes of the 1950s ran to them and embraced them. Relatives or friends had arrived to greet them at the station! Most of the audience now had tears in their eyes. Then those up front all stood together facing the seated crowd. They had become a larger group now. And the old trunk that had been lifted down from the train was in front of the larger group of people. The man who had recited the poem came to the fore. He stood in front of the trunk and read a short poem about the sun and the stars and

PART II

Figure 11

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Re-enactment migrants at Sirkeci Station, Istanbul

the trunk – how could people live without hope? By this time he was sitting on the old trunk. He declaimed that inside the trunk were the loves and sadnesses, youth and early age. In truth, inside the trunk were all the longings of the people of Rumeli. Again there was some smoke and the trunk slowly opened. A young boy climbed out. He had in his hands photographs. He pointed to the pictures and said, “This is me and this and this.” His mother asked him how he had gotten into the trunk, when he got in, and what business did he have in the trunk. She asked him in Rumeli dialect of Turkish. The boy did not answer his mother. Instead he looked out at the seated crowd and began to recite. “Yes, Rumeli is me. And the mountains.” He said again, “Rumeli, it is me.” This time the others behind him also joined in. “Rumeli, it is me.” In essence the young boy brought youth into the picture powerfully, and hope for all who had come. In this way the re-enactment of migration at the train station pulled in the audience. All who were seated could also say, “Rumeli, it is me.” There was a pause and a transition. And as people looked up they saw the full sign behind. “Migration – a story of sadness,” for it is both sadness and hope.

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In this second part of the book I will describe how the Rumeli migrants came to Istanbul and adapted to life there. It was not an easy transition. The hometown associations they developed became second families to many in their new urban environment. And Istanbul was not the impressive megalopolis it is today, nor was it the imperial capital it had been under the Ottomans. Rather, it was dilapidated and much worse for wear. And yet this was a place of refuge, a city of safety for the Muslims from the central Balkans who had to flee from their homes. It is to this city of Istanbul, with its multiple imperial pasts, that we now turn.

CHAPTER 4 THE IMPERIAL CITY OF ISTANBUL IN A DOWNWARD DOZE

The first way you encounter a city matters. At the same time what you bring to that city also matters. I came to Istanbul the first time by air, and as the plane circled the city, in my first glance out the window I saw hills covered with cemeteries. They must have been the cemeteries that had been spreading over the hills by Eyu¨p at the far end of the Golden Horn ever since the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453. Mezarlık, the Turkish word for “cemetery,” leapt to mind. I had been studying Turkish for two years and was coming to Turkey, hoping to improve my Turkish and to support myself by teaching in a dershane, a sort of supplementary tutoring school. Yet as the airplane flew on, I could not think of a single other word of Turkish. Was this a premonition? Later I would read how Le Corbusier, the famous French architect, who had come to Istanbul in 1911, had been entranced with how cemeteries were part of city space. The plane passed over the Bosphorus, the straits between Europe and Asia, and then the Sea of Marmara. I grew up on an island in the Detroit River and Lake Erie. I especially liked the way Istanbul was surrounded by and integrated with waterways. We descended to a small airport, nothing like the immense Atatu¨rk International Airport of today. As this was before modern security measures, the Turkish family I initially stayed with met me at the airplane. They drove me from the

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airport, through the old city, around the inlet of the Golden Horn and up north to where they lived. It was 1970 and Istanbul had expanded after World War II with extensive migration of villagers from Anatolia, but still there were many neighborhoods, especially in the old city and north of the Golden Horn in Beyog˘lu, that were full of buildings from the nineteenth century and earlier. The major infrastructure changes would not come until the 1980s. Later I would learn how fortunate I was to first explore Istanbul when it was still somewhat seedy, with old neighborhoods whose wooden buildings leaned out above the narrow streets.

Encountering Istanbul by Sea and Rail The forced migrants from the Balkans who came to Istanbul during the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913 came by ship, since other ways were blocked by Bulgarian troops. Some would have come from Black Sea ports, down the Bosphorus to Istanbul. But most came from Salonika, across the Aegean Sea, up the Dardanelles, through the Sea of Marmara, and then to the port area of Karako¨y in Istanbul. The ships were small and filled with desperate people who had lost all but their lives. Many of the passengers were weak and malnourished from having trekked to Salonika and then waited for weeks in refugee areas. For them, Istanbul was the imperial city, capital of the Ottoman Empire that had governed their homeland for over 500 years. The sight of the skyline of the old city with its mosques and minarets, as they came near, must have reassured them. The skyline of Istanbul is famous, and rightly so. Due to the hills, and the rule not to build higher than the minarets, especially in the old city, there is an undulating curve of landscape with cityscape, and no single building dominates. Rather, there are multiple mosques with domes and minarets that point upwards, as well as the Galata Tower in Beyog˘lu. Today great cruise ships come by sea from the Mediterranean, up the Dardanelles, through the Sea of Marmara, and dock near where the refugees from the Balkan Wars came in a hundred years ago. Only now there is a Museum of Modern Art that has skillfully been constructed from a former warehouse right alongside the wharf. And the seagulls flock in and follow the boats and ships as they did in the past when more desperate people arrived.

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After World War I, the migrants from the Balkans who came to Istanbul, including those from Skopje who came in the 1950s and 1960s, came by rail. The train trip from the Balkans is a land route past Edirne, along the north shore of the Sea of Marmara. The rails dip down by the sea and then come around toward the old city. If you are watching at just the right time from the train car window, you see what is left of the Byzantine walls around the perimeter of the old city and the famous Seven Towers where the walls reach down to the Sea of Marmara. But you do not see the skyline. The neighborhoods you pass by are poor. Eventually the train skirts the old city along the Marmara seaside and comes in under Topkapı and around to Sirkeci Station. But these were not the first Muslim refugees to come to Istanbul by rail. There had been Muslim refugees from the Balkans who had come even earlier by rail in the nineteenth century. During the Russo-Turkish War in the winter of 1878, trains on the newly built Rumeli Railroad carried cargo never envisioned by Ottoman economic planners. As British Ambassador Layard wrote in his Foreign Office dispatches, the trains carried desperate Muslim refugees each day who were fleeing the carnage of the war. Trains with from 8,000 to 18,000 of these wretched fugitives have begun arriving daily in Constantinople. Only open trucks can, in most cases be provided for them. The weather has been intensely cold, the snow falling heavily. The poor creatures are packed together standing and are then kept sometimes for more than 24 hours without food or shelter. As the trains arrive at the stations, the bodies of men, women, and children frozen to death, or who have succumbed to illness are dragged out of the wagons. Even the tops of the closed carriages are occupied by the women and children who in some instances, numbed by the cold, roll off and are killed [. . .]. The fugitives arrive continuously by train to Constantinople. They are mostly women and children. There is scarcely more than 5 percent of men. They include persons in the better classes of life, as well as the poorer inhabitants of villages. They come here in the utmost destitution [. . .]. Not a murmur of complaint is heard from the crowd of starving and half-frozen human beings that arrive here daily by the railroad.1

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European illustrated newspapers of the time, like The London Illustrated News or Le Monde Illustre´ (Paris),2 published evocative drawings of trains full of refugees arriving in Sirkeci Station in Constantinople in the dead of winter. And yet, this seems to have been readily forgotten in Western Europe, if people there were ever aware of the suffering of refugees in Constantinople. Rather, in only a few years there was sufficient interest in traveling to the “exotic east” that spurred traveling from there by rail to Constantinople. Connections from Western Europe were established such that in June 1883, the first “Express d’Orient” left Paris for Vienna. On 4 October 1884, with the farewell music of Mozart’s “Turkish March” playing, the first train left the Gare de l’Est in Paris. It traveled to Munich, Vienna, Rumania, and on to a station in Bulgaria, where it had to stop and the passengers had to take another train to the Black Sea port of Varna. There they took a ferry to Constantinople. The entire trip took 80 hours. On 1 June 1889, there was the first nonstop train from Paris to Constantinople. The previous year, the Ottomans had begun work on the Sirkeci train station to make it worthy of such an impressive journey. The architect was a Prussian, August Jachmund, who had been sent to Istanbul to study Ottoman architecture. He designed a large, memorable station that is a famous example of European orientalism. What still stands out today is the use of a pinkish melon color on the exterior walls with their arched windows and high-ceilinged rooms. The Sirkeci Station was completed in 1890. And in 1891, the train from Paris to Constantinople was officially renamed “the Orient Express.” In the twentieth century interest in the Orient Express would increase. Services grew so that by 1930 there were actually three rail routes by that name: the Orient Express, the Simplon Orient Express, and the Arlberg Orient Express. The first two went from Paris to Istanbul, and the last from Paris to Athens. It was in the 1930s that the Orient Express became known as a luxury rail service with sleeping cars and superb cuisine. Agatha Christie’s famous mystery novel, Murder on the Orient Express, published in 1934, was set on the Simplon Orient Express that went through Yugoslavia. Behind the growth of these rail routes was a Western European fascination with Istanbul, or Constantinople, as the travel brochures

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preferred to call it, the former capital of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, a city unlike any other in the world.

Constantinople – Byzantine Mosaics The city had been founded earlier, but in the third century the Emperor Constantine established it as his capital of the Roman Empire, built like Rome itself on seven hills, but with a much more impressive and strategic setting. Constantinople was on land trade routes from Asia and Africa to Europe and on sea trade routes between the Aegean Sea and Black Sea. The city itself was set on the Sea of Marmara and the Golden Horn, an elongated inlet shaped like a horn with deep-water ports. It was the capital of what became the Byzantine Empire for over a thousand years, from 330 to 1453. The Emperor Justinian in the sixth century continued to expand the city and had the cathedral of Hagia Sofia built overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Its dome fell, and was built up again. At this time the population was half a million people – the largest and wealthiest city in Europe. The city became a center of Eastern Christian culture and trade with impressive mosaics and wealthy merchants. Neighboring powers coveted it, and so to protect it 18-meter high walls were built all across the far end of the peninsula from the Sea of Marmara to the Golden Horn, and around the seasides as well. The city withstood multiple sieges. But in 1204 Roman Catholic Crusaders with the backing of rival city Venice sacked the city and it never fully recovered. So why has Constantinople so captured people’s imagination? There are many different answers. It depends on what aspects of the city reach out to you most. For some it is the domed churches with mosaics, for others the minarets and tiled mosques, and for still others, the way the waterways flow around the city of hills. When I went to Istanbul the first time the city never ceased to amaze me. First the waterways, and the mosques, but then one day I found mosaics, too. Not of Hagia Sofia, though – the building was too immense and the space did not hold together for me. It had an emptiness and a sadness that I later came to associate with the thousands of refugees from the Russo-Turkish War who had been kept there. Rather, there is a former Byzantine church, the church of the Holy Savior in Chora, that had been turned into a mosque known as the Kariye

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Camii. It is far from the city center, out near the city walls. When it was turned into a mosque the mosaics were all whitewashed over. Later they were rediscovered and the whitewash that had protected them for centuries was painstakingly removed. It is now the Kariye Museum. I found it totally by accident when I took a wrong bus from Taksim Square in the European part of Istanbul. I ended up in the old city by the city walls, got out of the bus, and went into a somewhat strange mosque. To my amazement as I entered I saw in the early morning light the most wondrous mosaics – gold and brilliant, shining down from the walls. There was one of the Resurrection, and another of the late Byzantine donor humbly handing a model of the church to the enthroned Christ. There are exquisite naturally patterned marble slabs along the walls that I later learned were taken from other buildings. Starting in the seventh century, builders in Constantinople would mine other buildings when they needed materials and the Church of the Holy Savior had been rebuilt several times, the last time in the fourteenth century. Up higher, where the vaulting of this double pumpkin-domed building3 begins, the mosaics abound. Most of the backgrounds are golden, that is, there are small pieces of glass with gold leaf behind that catch the light to

Figure 12

Mosaic of Christ in Kariye Mosque/Chora Church

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shimmer. For me Byzantium is here, especially in the early morning when the light plays on the surfaces.

The Conquest of Constantinople and the Ottoman Love of Gardens The decline of Byzantine power was gradual. There was a battle in eastern Anatolia in 1071, the Battle of Manzikert, in which the Seljuk Turks defeated the Byzantines. This weakened the Byzantines, who subsequently had difficulty recruiting armies, and it opened Anatolia to migrations of Turkic peoples who themselves had been pushed out of Central Asia as the Mongols moved westward. These Turkic peoples had been Islamized in their trek across the Middle East, and as they settled Anatolia they brought Islam with them. Among these people were some who settled in the northwest of Anatolia and made the city of Bursa their capital. They were the Osmanlıs, and became known as the “Ottomans” in the West. The Byzantines hired them as mercenaries to fight for them in Anatolia and the Balkans. The Ottomans became more powerful and crossed over the Dardanelles into Europe under their own auspices. There they established their second capital in Edirne (Adrianople) in 1361. They fought the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and took the city of Skopje in 1392. They conquered Salonika in 1432. The Ottomans had thus skirted Constantinople when they had first crossed into Europe in the mid-1300s. In 1453 Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II turned back to deal with the Byzantines and Constantinople. The city was down to a population of only 50,000 people. The Sultan offered terms for surrender of the city three times, for he wanted to make the city his capital and did not want to destroy it, but the Byzantine Emperor refused. After 53 days, the Ottomans breached the walls of the city and took it. Sultan Mehmed II rode into the city on a white horse. After the final Ottoman victory, Sultan Mehmed II, known as Fatih, “the Conqueror,” worked to repopulate the city with people of different backgrounds, including Greeks, Jews, and Muslims, and to make it a fitting capital for the growing Ottoman Empire. Hagia Sofia became a mosque, although many other churches were allowed to remain churches. Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror built the bedistan, or central

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secure area, of what would later become the Covered Bazaar and dedicated its revenues to refurbish and maintain the “Mosque of Ayasofya.” But Istanbul under Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror was still a city undergoing restoration. Rather, it was a hundred years later, in the time of Sultan Su¨leyman, whose reign lasted from 1520 to 1566, when Istanbul had recovered, that the city was again an imperial city. Sultan Su¨leyman was the tenth Ottoman sultan; the Ottomans were most fortunate in that the first ten sultans were remarkable leaders, most of whom led their troops themselves. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire was politically and culturally at its height in the sixteenth century. Sultan Su¨leyman expanded the Ottoman Empire across Egypt and Libya to Algiers in North Africa in the west, along the Red Sea to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the south, across Iraq to Baghdad and Basra in the east, and across southeast Europe to Buda in Hungary in the north. Sultan Su¨leyman, known as “Suleyman the Magnificent” in the West, was known in his own realm as Kanuni Su¨leyman, that is “Suleyman the Lawgiver,” for the codifying of laws of previous sultans into a single code under his administration that would last for 300 years. He paid particular attention to fairness in taxation and to laws affecting nonMuslims. He supported education and had many schools built. And he was a patron of the arts and artisans throughout his long reign. Sultan Su¨leyman was himself a poet. His divan, that is, the collection of his poetry, is extant and was beautifully illuminated in 1536 by the artist Kara Memi, with exquisite flower motifs so natural that one can recognize specific types of tulips, carnations, irises, hyacinths, and anemones. There is one gazel where he lauds his wife Hu¨rrem Sultan in the following lines. Notice the plant motifs co-joined with the city. Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight [. . .] My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf [. . .] My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world [. . .] My Constantinople, my Karaman, the earth of my Anatolia . . . Not just this poem, but the whole collection of poetry, is illuminated with flowers and plants.

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I mention this because the second half of the sixteenth century was a time when Western Europeans were beginning to respond to the Turkish love of flowers and the variety of flowers that graced the Ottoman court and the gardens of Istanbul. Many people associate the tulip with the Dutch, but the tulip came from the Ottomans. Busbecq, ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor to the Ottoman Court in the mid-1500s, first reports being handed narcissi by a Janissary in Buda, to his utter amazement, and then on his way to Istanbul in Ottoman lands seeing flowers blooming when he would have thought it was past their season. He was astounded by the variety of flowers in Istanbul that he had never seen before, and it was he who introduced the lilac, the tulip, and the horse chestnut to Europe from the Ottomans.4 Busbecq brought back tulip bulbs and new seeds to his friends in Vienna on return trips. In 1562 an Amsterdam merchant sent the first crates of tulip bulbs from Istanbul to Europe.5 Travelers to Istanbul frequently remarked on the beauty of the gardens of the city and the abundance of flowers in these gardens. Women put them in their hair, men in their turbans, and city parades included servants carrying overflowing baskets of flowers. Mosques would place baskets of flowers along their windows so those praying would enjoy their fragrance. Anatolia had a great variety of flora and the Ottomans’ love of flowers nourished this. It is apparent in their famous tile work and in their silks, where flower motifs abound. Embroidery, which has been practiced by women in Ottoman lands to the present day, is largely based on flower motifs. The actual flowers and trees that were introduced to Europe from Ottoman Anatolia at this time include: crocus, cyclamen, narcissus, anemone, tulip, carnation, iris, walnut, peony, horse chestnut, day lily, white jasmine, weeping willow, and rhododendron, among many others. Horticulturalists note that there was a revolution in Europe’s gardens that began after the second half of the sixteenth century, thanks to the introduction of plants from Ottoman Anatolia.6 But while the Western Europeans lauded the beauty of the flowers of Ottoman gardens, they preferred their own formal designs to the more informal asymmetrical design of Ottoman gardens.7 What is more, the Ottomans often included vegetables and fruit in their gardens, along with flowers. And they would eat the vegetables and fruit, or sell them, or give them to the poor. In this they were very much like the Muslims

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of Skopje with their back gardens that they remembered so well. Indeed, these people were cultural descendants of Ottomans, so to have beautiful and functional gardens, this was what a garden entailed.

Istanbul – from Imperial Mosque to Elegant Kiosk Near the end of his life, Sultan Su¨leyman had his chief architect, the great Mimar Sinan, design and build an imperial mosque for him on the third hill of Istanbul. This became the Su¨leymaniye Mosque with its famous four minarets and dome that are recognizable in the skyline of the city. Mimar Sinan studied Justinian’s Hagia Sofia and improved on its design. The central dome of the Su¨leymaniye seems to float on light, as there are windows all around below it that let in light on all sides. Beneath this its half-domes on four sides have three tiers of windows that also let in light. In size it is somewhat smaller than Hagia Sofia, and the de´cor is understated, with tile work and marble columns. When I first visited the Su¨leymaniye Mosque, I remember standing in the middle of the floor in my stocking feet, with a scarf on my head, looking up at the reddish-colored dome as the soft light filtered in, and feeling utter peacefulness. Sultan Su¨leyman is buried behind his mosque, along with his wife and mother and sister. And Mimar Sinan, the architect who designed and built the Su¨leymaniye, is also buried nearby, just outside the mosque walls. Some see his tu¨rbe, or mausoleum, so close by as a sort of signature. Still, if people want to understand what has captured the imagination about Istanbul of the Ottomans, they do not necessarily mention the Su¨leymaniye Mosque. There are smaller mosques, also by Mimar Sinan, like that of Sokullu Mehmet Pasha, near the Hippodrome, that are also exquisite and perhaps easier to appreciate since they are on a more human scale. Yet I would suggest another place in Istanbul that combines architecture and gardens with distinctive Ottoman taste and elegance. For this you have to go to Topkapı Palace at the sea end of the old city. The Ottoman sultans lived in this palace for almost 400 years, until the nineteenth century when they moved to more European-style palaces like Dolmabahc e and Yıldız up the Bosphorus.

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Su¨leymaniye Mosque

Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror planned what became Topkapı Palace on what had been the old acropolis. The previous Byzantine palaces were in ruins and the Sultan liked the setting of the acropolis for the views up the Bosphorus. He also liked that it stood on hilly ground at the end of the promontory of the city overlooking the Sea of Marmara to one side

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and the beginning of the Golden Horn to the other. With rebuilt higher walls it would have privacy and space. When I first went to Istanbul I visited Topkapı. I walked up the long winding street from the Golden Horn, past the walls that kept the parks and grounds of the palace private, up and around to Hagia Sofia, and then back and behind to get to the massive Imperial Gate. Once inside the gate I was in the First Courtyard, which was like a long park. There I bought a ticket to visit the palace. There are four major courtyards. In this First Courtyard, along with all the trees and plantings, there appeared to be an old Byzantine Church off to one side, and the Imperial Mint was here, too. I wandered on. The next gate was not quite as imposing as the first one. It led into the Second Courtyard. I recall especially the kitchens there. And there were stables and one tall building. I remember being surprised that there were not more tall buildings. Most of the buildings were low – only one or two stories high at most. You could visit part of the Harem quarters from here, smaller rooms joined by passageways and smaller courtyards. Then the third gate led to the Third Courtyard. Special ambassadors were received here in audience chambers. There were also rooms full of remarkable treasures and sacred relics. And then to the fourth gate and the Fourth Courtyard, the most private part of the complex that was only for the Sultan and his family. It was made up of terraces and pavilions and gardens that were even more lovely. It was then that I realized I had been looking for a single large palace on Western European dimensions with surrounding gardens. Instead I had found a very different sense of space where interiors got smaller and gardens and courtyards got more beautiful as I went further in. I stopped in front of the Baghdat Kiosk in the Fourth Courtyard. I had never seen such an elegant building. It was small, centrally doomed, with a flat roof to the sides of the dome. In front there were three arches over the portico, supported by slender marble columns. To one side were a terrace and a fountain. I walked inside the kiosk to find myself in a single room lined with blue and white tiles of curving flowers and leaves in exquisite bright blues that gleamed in the light from the high windows above. There were tall windows on all sides that were framed with dark wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Low sofas stretched across recessed areas in front of the window bays. There were

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subtle rugs stretched in front of the sofas. For wintertime, to one side of the door there was a fireplace with a gilded hood. The Baghdat Kiosk was built in 1639 to celebrate Sultan Murad IV’s victory at the retaking of Baghdad. It was meant to be an ideal Ottoman room. The tiles were copies of Ottoman Iznik tiles from the time of Sultan Su¨leyman a century earlier. The room had been designed and decorated in classic Ottoman style. The one somewhat out of place feature of the Baghdat Kiosk was the stove in the middle of the room. It was a gift from King Louis XIV of France. During the reign of Sultan Murat IV, the Europeans, who had been fighting the Thirty Years War for the first part of the 1600s, were still in awe of the Ottomans, as they had been for the past several hundred years. This would change, though, before the end of the 1600s.

An Ottoman’s View of Istanbul: “The Center of the World” Istanbul did not just capture the imagination of outsiders who came to its shores. People who grew up in the city and those who moved there have been among the most loyal to its fascination, from travel writer Evliya C¸elebi to Skopje-born poet Yahya Kemal in Ottoman times, from photographer Ara Gu¨ler8 to writer Orhan Pamuk9 in modern times. Evliya C¸elebi was born in Istanbul in 1609 and served at the Ottoman court until the death of Sultan Murat IV in 1640. He was perhaps the greatest travel writer of all time and is known for his ten-volume work, the Seyahatname, or “Book of Travels,” that catalogues his travels throughout Ottoman lands, from Safavid Persia to Hungary, beginning in Istanbul and ending in Cairo, where he died in 1683. His unit of description is the town, and wherever he traveled, he described much about each place: its history, geography, fortifications, climate, notables, markets, foods, parks, gardens, shrines, the dress and customs of its people, proper names, and biographies of the dead. He also included a record of his own travel and anecdotes. As a traveler he was urbane with a sort of guarded tolerance – “it is their custom, so we cannot censor it” – and he was against fanaticism of any sort.10 Evliya lived in old Istanbul in a house that his great-grandfather had received at the conquest of Constantinople. His father was a goldsmith, and Evliya grew up knowing Greek, which he said he learned from one of his father’s workmen who used to read to him about Alexander.

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He studied 11 years in Qur’an schools and was a hafız. He was especially skilled and interested in music. He served as a page in the Third Courtyard of the Ottoman Palace during the time of Sultan Murat IV. Book I of his travels is all on Istanbul, his hometown, which he refers to as “Islam-bol,” which means “full of Islam.” For Evliya, Istanbul was the center of the world, a city against which all others were compared. And at the center of this description is the historic parade of all 735 guilds parading before Sultan Murad IV before he went off on his Baghdad campaign in 1638. The guilds that were most essential to the army went first: guards, watchmen, and gendarmes to keep order, along with parade sergeants, sanitation officers, physicians and surgeons, oculists, apothecaries, and perfumers. There were booksellers, poets, storytellers, astronomers, schoolteachers, farmers, fruit merchants, and armorers, followed by the most privileged guild, that of the goldsmiths, then the jewelers, pearl merchants and watchmakers. The list goes on and on, with several categories that were in conflict. Who should come first? The butchers or the bakers? The confectioners or the fish cooks? At the very end were the tavern owners, and throughout were the pickpockets who wove their way through the crowds. This is an amazing picture of Istanbul’s professions and trades in the mid-seventeenth century. Evliya notes that among members of the guilds are many Jews and Christians besides the Muslims. More generally in his account of Istanbul Evliya describes the three main quarters of Istanbul, besides what became known as the old city, the part of Istanbul within the city walls. The three quarters were Eyu¨p, ¨ sku¨dar. Eyu¨p is at the far end of the Golden Horn where Galata, and U the first mosque, built by Fatih Sultan Mehmed, stood and where each new Ottoman sultan went to be girded. It was an area where the Byzantines had had cemeteries; with the presence of the sacred mosque of Eyu¨p, it became a shrine for Muslims and a place where Muslims wanted to be buried too. Galata was north across the Golden Horn from the old city, an area where the Genoese traders had lived for centuries. It was largely ¨ sku¨dar, the third quarter, was Christian, with churches and a port. U across the Bosphorus in Asia. It had actually been settled before the old city of Istanbul, but had not grown as the European side had. In his account of Istanbul, Evliya also cares about food. He is interested in how the city is provisioned and where the choicest foods

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EUROPE Dolmabahçe Palace

Eyüp

Galata Tower

os

B Chora Church

Fındıkzade

Golden Ho

Old City

s

ru

o ph

ASIA Üsküdar

rn

Topkapı Palace

Sea of Marmara Figure 14

Map of Istanbul

come from – meat from Rumania and Thrace; wheat, lentils, and sugar from Egypt; duck, wild geese, and aquatic birds from certain lakes; while the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara had every kind of fish, and Istanbul itself was a garden-city full of fruit of many varieties – of grapes, figs, apricots, peaches, and pomegranates. And although Evliya claims not to drink wine, he describes many taverns kept by Greeks, Armenians, and Jews and where they are located across the city. One of my favorite ways to appreciate Evliya C¸elebi’s descriptions of Istanbul is an eating tour of the city,11 which is at the same time a description of the different groups of the city. If you start in the holy place of Eyu¨p, according to Evliya, there are always religious people there sacrificing sheep, so you are bound to get a good meal. He also writes of an exquisite yogurt that is made just outside the main mosque there. Then he suggests walking along the Golden Horn to the Sweet Waters, where a special fish is found. And nearby is a Sufi center where the dervishes will give you pilav, that is, hot cooked rice, for free. Afterwards, he suggests crossing the Jewish quarter of Hasiko¨y, but

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making sure to stop to have some of the famous grapes, peaches, and a special cider that they make there. Another half hour’s walk and Evliya is in a park where he suggests having a meal of oysters with white wine. Soon he is by a shipyard and coming up to Galata, the area of the Genoese and foreign sailors. Evliya warns about drunken unbelievers. He recommends boza, a delicious corn-based drink. With this, though, there is still good food in Galata. He recommends rissoles and light rolls. Walking further north along the Bosphorus, Evliya is in what is now Bes¸iktas¸. Here there are orchards with cherry trees and rose gardens. Evliya takes a caique, a low boat, up the Bosphorus to Sariyer, across to Beykoz on the Asian side, and then back down to U¨sku¨dar. He recommends a glass of sherbet while waiting for a ferry to take him back to Istanbul. Evliya traveled to the Balkans multiple times and wrote about them in Books VI, VII, and VIII. He visited Skopje and Prizren. He even went as far as Vienna. He witnessed an Ottoman defeat in 1664 in western Hungary at the Battle of St. Gotthard, largely caused by incompetent Ottoman military leadership. In Book IX he went on pilgrimage to Mecca. Book X is about Cairo, which he describes in detail as he described Istanbul in the first book, and where he passed away in 1683. I wonder if Evliya realized that the Ottomans’ growing difficulties with the organization of their military and its leadership would cause them to lose power in their European lands in the Balkans. He was an astute observer. Could that be why he settled in Egypt in the end? The year Evliya died, 1683, is also the year that the Ottomans were defeated in their second siege of Vienna. The Ottomans were skilled at siege warfare. The siege lasted two months and they came within a week of victory, but then the Austrians got help from Jan Sobieski and the Ottomans were routed. In retrospect, what the Ottomans lacked was enough heavy artillery to get through the thick walls around Vienna. Europeans celebrated the victory, but for the Ottomans, they could not know to what extent it was a turning point. Historians see the loss of Buda to the Hapsburgs soon after in 1686 as a greater blow to the Ottomans because it was an Ottoman city that the Ottomans had held for 150 years, since the time of Sultan Su¨leyman.12 As if that were not enough, in 1688 Belgrade was taken temporarily by the Hapsburgs, and in 1689 the city of Nis¸ to the south fell to the Austrians as well.

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For the Muslims of U¨sku¨p this would prove devastating. The fall of Nis¸ opened up central Rumeli lands of the Ottomans to raids by Austrian military. That same year, in 1689, an Austrian army marched ¨ sku¨p. Partly in south through Bosnia, Kosova, and Macedonia to U retaliation for the siege of Vienna, the Austrian commander ordered ¨ sku¨p. The fire burned for two days and destroyed the burning of U much of the city, as most of the houses were made of wood. The population declined greatly, and some emigrated to Istanbul.13 ¨ sku¨p’s bazaar, which was the largest in all the Balkans, burned as U well. U¨sku¨p lost its importance as a major commercial center and did not regain this until the end of the nineteenth century.

The Grand Bazaar and the Guild System Meanwhile the Imperial City was affected by the defeats of the Ottoman military. Before 1683 the Ottomans had fought on foreigners’ lands. After 1683, instead they found themselves fighting within the borders of Ottoman territory.14 Each subsequent loss of Ottoman territory led to the displacement of Ottoman Muslims. Some of these Muslims migrated to Istanbul, where they formed an underclass. There, along with extra Janissaries and other soldiers who had turned to trades, the migrants were resented by the tradesmen and artisans of the city15 who worked to keep a limited number of shops of different trades. Some migrants were even told to return whence they had come. And yet, despite these conflicts, in general the shopkeepers, and especially those of the Grand Bazaar, were a bastion of stability in these times and in the 1700s. Through much of the history of the Grand Bazaar, there is a sense in which it was a city unto itself with rules and practices that insulated it to a certain extent from political intrigues. When there was trouble, the shopkeepers would close their shops and close the great gates of the Bazaar. What is striking about Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar is its immensity. It has broad gates at its various entrances that lead into high vaulted stone archways. As you look down these, you see seemingly endless walkways with shops on either side. The products are well displayed with natural light and ventilation gently filtering down from high windows above during the day. The Bazaar is only open during daytime

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hours, so that is sufficient. It is only in the last century that electric light was added. There is no central plan; the Bazaar grew in its own way over the centuries. In time the Covered Bazaar, as it is also known, came to cover 61 streets, which gives an idea of its enormity. It all grew from the time after the conquest, designed on the model of the markets in the second Ottoman capital in Edirne.16 The essence of the Grand Bazaar in its heyday from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century was the Ottoman guild system, the esnaf. It developed over time from religious ahi organizations of master– apprentice relations that set standards of production and were largely selfgoverning. They were somewhat different in different cities of the realm. Each guild had a set of rules as well, a sort of law of the artisans that was devised by the artisans themselves.17 Mostly these rules were concerned with production, monopoly, the numbers of masters and shops, quality, raw material distribution, and fixed prices.18 In certain areas, the guilds worked together; for example, in distribution of a raw material that several guilds needed, such as sugar, which needed to be distributed among the perfumers’ guild, candy sellers, and sugar sellers; or morocco leather, which was needed by cobblers, boot makers, and certain merchants.19 The system benefited the guilds in that they got monopoly rights, and it benefited the state in that the needs of the people were met and taxes could be readily assessed. Each guild would accumulate funds from donations, legacies, regular amounts from the masters, and lesser amounts from the apprentices and journeymen. These would be used for credit in starting a new shop or workshop, for food for holiday times, to help a sick member, or to help with burial expenses. They were also used to pay watchmen, the fire brigade, and even alms for beggars around the Grand Bazaar.20 The major danger was from fires and earthquakes. There were two significant fires, in 1546 and 1589, that burned parts of the Bazaar and the bedistans, the central sections where the most valuable goods were kept. In the next century there is record of several fires, with a particularly bad one in 1660 when much of the old city burned as well. Like Skopje, most Istanbul buildings other than the mosques were made of wood. But in the case of Istanbul, it was rapidly rebuilt. As for the Grand Bazaar, the guilds had some funds for rebuilding. But with each

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fire, more of the Bazaar was rebuilt in stone. There was an earthquake in 1766 in which the Bazaar was damaged, but it was repaired the following year by the chief architect of the empire, Ahmet Agha.21 The next century had a famous fire, the Hocapas¸a fire in 1865, in which much of the city burned. This time, though, the walls of the Covered Bazaar largely protected it. But nothing could protect the Bazaar from the earthquake in 1894 that caused the collapse of some of the domes of the Inner Bedistan. Some merchants used the excuse of the earthquake to leave the Bazaar entirely and move to more spacious quarters in Beyog˘lu. Even a year after the quake there were still huge blocks of stone inside the Bazaar. Sultan Abdu¨lhamid ordered that the Bazaar be repaired, but also that its size be reduced. It took two years to finish the repair, although some see the restoration as having changed the character of the Bazaar and taken away its identity.22 More important than the reduction in size, though, was what had been going on within the Covered Bazaar in the nineteenth century and particularly in the Sandal Bedistan. This had been the area for fine textiles. To understand how important textiles had been, we can look back to Evliya C¸elebi’s account of the parade of the guilds and tradesmen 200 years earlier, in 1638, with a focus on those related to fine cloth. Evliya C¸elebi listed dealers in brocade (16 shops, 25 men), weavers of velvet (70 shops, 25 men), weavers of striped and Damascus cloth (70 shops, 100 men), cloth makers (500 shops, 600 men), cloth merchants (700 shops, 1,000 men), dyers (500 shops, 800 men), and dye pounders (100 shops, 800 men). But the growth of cheap English cottons in the 1800s led to a West European takeover and a collapse of Ottoman weaving production and trade. This eventually led to the undermining of their guilds. The Sandal Bedistan was turned into a warehouse, and in 1912 into an auction house. In the early twentieth century the Covered Bazaar was described as a half-abandoned market with inferior goods. The more prestigious shops and shoppers had moved to Beyog˘lu, north of the Golden Horn, and further north up to S¸is¸li. The number of professions and trades in the Covered Bazaar had shrunk from the hundreds to only nine or ten: jewelers, jewelry craftsmen, carpet dealers, antique sellers, leather goods and handbag sellers, shoemakers, ready-made clothing dealers, quiltmakers, and tourist goods sellers.23

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When the forced migrants came from the central Balkans in the midtwentieth century, the Covered Bazaar had recovered to a certain extent from the worst years in the early 1900s, and it has continued to recover. Many of these migrants worked in the Covered Bazaar, for they were trained craftsmen, especially in leatherworking and other trades. And although the guilds were no longer the powerful organizations they had been in earlier centuries in Istanbul, the guilds had not dissolved in the Balkans. The Balkan migrants’ experience in active guilds and in working with people of different religions gave them an advantage when they came to Istanbul. But still it was not easy, and they often worked through networks of other people from the Balkans.

The Foreign Occupation of Istanbul The ultimate degradation of Ottoman Istanbul, the lowest point in its downward spiral, came in 1918 when the British, French, and Italians landed and occupied the city with their soldiers. The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Abdu¨lhamid had tried to hold onto its territories, but Russia’s inciting of Slavic peoples in the Balkans, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877 – 8, and the subsequent Treaty of Berlin all led to loss of Ottoman territories. Sultan Abdu¨lhamid was forced to borrow from European creditors and the empire eventually fell into grave debt. As the political scene got more problematic in the early twentieth century, the full dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire was seen as only a matter of time. The Young Turks tried to prevent this and shore up the country with a new sort of unity, but it did not hold together. Sultan Res¸ad’s tour of the Balkans in 1911 was a last ditch effort in this regard. Within a year the Balkan Wars had begun and the Ottomans lost even more of their European lands. All Europe was divided into camps of alliances. And thanks to Great Britain having reneged on sending two battleships that the Ottomans had already paid for, and Young Turk leader Enver Pasha’s preference for Germany, the Ottomans entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers. It would cast the die for the end of the Ottoman Empire. It is interesting to note that the future leader of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatu¨rk, was against this alliance with Germany. During the war, the British tried to occupy Istanbul by first taking the Gallipoli peninsula by the Dardanelles Straits. It was 1915, and the

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Turkish commander, Mustafa Kemal, held off the Australian– New Zealand troops at the critical time. Again and again he led his Turkish troops in frontline battles until finally the British gave up the whole initiative. But it was at great human cost. Until this war, the Muslims of Istanbul and the minorities had been exempt from conscription. This changed. To keep supplying Gallipoli with soldiers, even high school students of Istanbul were conscripted. That year it was reported the Istanbul high school graduating classes were bare. They had all been sent to fight in Gallipoli and had not returned. World War I was devastating for Ottoman society. Over 700,000 Ottoman soldiers were killed or died of disease, and an estimated 5 million Ottoman civilians died, about 25 percent of the total population. What this meant in various regions is hard to fathom. One way is through the widow index. According to this index, for every 1,000 married women in regions in the southwest, the northeast, and around Istanbul, roughly half were widows. Except for one year, the Ottomans had been at war from 1911 to 1918, beginning with the Italian campaign in Libya and the Balkan Wars, through World War I. So many men were handicapped, missing, or dead. Families made up of women sold all their possessions to try to survive. When Germany and the Central Powers lost the war, there was an initial agreement between Britain and the Ottomans that the British would only occupy the forts, and not the city of Istanbul. And yet, soon after, the French, British, and then Italian troops landed and occupied Istanbul from November 1918 to October 1923. The French General d’Esperey even rode up a main street of Galata on a white horse in February 1919, like Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror had done in 1453. Many Turks never forgave the French this insult. In addition, there was psychological warfare in that Ottoman officers were mandated to salute all foreign soldiers, no matter their rank. This, too, was seen as insulting, particularly if these were Greeks or Armenians in foreign uniforms. The Ottoman officers stopped wearing their uniforms rather than salute the foreigners. And there was the added indignity and hardship that the foreign officers and administrators requisitioned Turkish homes for the occupation. The behavior of some minorities in Istanbul, particularly of the Istanbul Greeks, was repugnant to many Muslims. The Greek Patriarchy

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was taken over by radical clergy who told the Greeks they were no longer Ottoman citizens. There were Greek flags and a large photograph of the Greek leader in Taksim Square. The Greek occupation of Izmir in May 1920, permitted by the British, and subsequent movements of Greek troops into Anatolia were deeply resented by Muslims. Even when the Greek armies were defeated by the Turkish nationalist troops under Mustafa Kemal, there was an attempt by Greek armies to take Istanbul as a consolation prize. But by this time the British were no longer supportive of the Greek forces. I mention this period of degradation for the city because its conditions led to changes in Istanbul that the migrants from Skopje found difficult to comprehend. This period led to a break with the Ottoman past in profound ways. Women were forced to work outside the home. The Sultan lost prestige. And the neighborliness of Muslim Turks living with people of different religions, in particular with the Christian Greeks, that had been the usual case in Istanbul for over 400 years, was wrenched apart by nationalist politics and the favoring of minorities by the occupying forces. In contrast, those from the Balkans who came to Istanbul at mid-century remained in a more Ottoman cultural frame and retained many of its assumptions and traditions longer. Meanwhile daily life in Istanbul was exceedingly hard for Muslims. So many families had lost their menfolk in the war. The best account I know of this is Irfan Orga’s Portrait of a Turkish Family.24 He had been born in 1908 to an Ottoman family that lived in a neighborhood in the old city behind the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, in an old Ottoman home with a garden and a view of the Marmara Sea. He remembers his father and uncle talking of the coming of war and even the classic Ottoman song sung in the streets when his father was conscripted in 1915: Ey gaziler yol go¨ru¨ndu¨ Yine garib serime Dag˘lar tas¸lar dayanamaz Benim ahu zarima O holy warriors, it’s time we were going Once again to be poor and alone Neither mountains nor stones can bear My bitter lamentation

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His father had sold the family business and even moved the family into a smaller home in hopes of providing enough funds for his family of three children and his mother and wife while he was gone, and in case he did not return. The wooden box full of funds from this was kept in the home. But, as was so common in Istanbul, one night there was a fire. The family escaped, but all their money burned, along with the wife’s jewelry. They were destitute. The father never returned. In 1918, the year that Irfan Orga’s family’s home burned, 1,475 homes burned in Istanbul.25 Again the homes were the vernacular wood houses that Le Corbusier had so appreciated, but that even he had noted burned so readily.26 This contributed to poverty and social disintegration in the city along with the savaging of the war. What is left of the imperial city of the Byzantines or the Ottomans? A National Geographic description of Istanbul in 1922 is telling here. Stamboul – home of Roman emperors, capital of magnificent sultans, scene of fabulous talks which every one has read – is now falling into decay upon its seven hills. Everything has an air of being second-rate and outworn. Acres of land laid bare by careless fires constitute one-fourth of the city’s area, and the remainder is for the most part covered by unpainted, weather-stained houses and rotting window lattices above and small, dirty shops beneath. Mosques and tombs are dirty and neglected. Yet, in spite of all this, Stamboul retains its magic of a uniquely situated city, and from afar has still a beauty that is incomparable.27 Yet what the foreign occupiers never suspected happened. Instead of divvying up the central Ottoman Empire among themselves, a new Turkish Republic arose in central Anatolia that led to the eventual departure of the occupiers. The British as the main occupying force grossly underestimated the Turks and Turkish leadership. The hero of Gallipoli, Mustafa Kemal, was able to bring Turkish armies together in Anatolia. The resistance to the occupiers grew stronger as guilds, businessmen’s and women’s organizations, and the Red Crescent all worked to support the new Turkish movement and secretly to send armaments to the fledging Turkish armies from stockpiles in Istanbul. It helped that the different foreign occupiers never really got along. The French resented the British leadership. The Italians saw that the

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territories they had been promised were going to the Greeks. And so the French and the Italians ended up supporting Turkish nationalists and even helping supply them with armaments indirectly. When Greek armies moved into central Anatolia, there were Turkish armies to face and defeat them, and eventually to force them back to Izmir and out of Anatolia. When the Turkish armies headed toward Istanbul, Churchill ordered the British to stand their ground. Wisely, the British commander refused. On 6 October 1923 the British troops left Istanbul and the Turkish troops marched into the city. To this day 6 October is a holiday in Turkey, the liberation of Istanbul. It was the first day I visited the Rumeli Turks Association in 2007, a proud day 84 years later. But back in 1923, the city and its people were exhausted. Istanbul was no longer even a capital city. Mustafa Kemal had moved the capital of Turkey to Ankara to symbolize the new Republic of Turkey. Istanbul would become an imperial backwater, but it would remain a place of refuge for Muslims of the former Ottoman Empire.

CHAPTER 5 THE HOMETOWN ASSOCIATION IN ISTANBUL IN THE EARLY YEARS

When I first came to Istanbul to study the experience of Rumeli Turks and their migrant associations, I went to an early meeting of the Kosova Association. An engineer, who had come to Istanbul at age seven, told me how hard it had been with his family of five siblings when they had first come to Istanbul from Mitrovice in Kosova in the 1950s. The life of an immigrant is hard and not just for material reasons. You come from a place where you are somebody. Then all of a sudden you are nobody.1 His father worked as a shoemaker, but he said that all his children would go to university. And indeed, one is a doctor, one an architect, and the man I was talking to had become an engineer. However, he recalled the early years in Istanbul with pain. One of the unexpected differences was that in former Yugoslavia young boys would wear shorts. This was not the custom in Istanbul at the time and so they stood out. Further, he said, “People would laugh at the way we spoke Turkish.” There are Rumelian dialects of Turkish that are different from the Istanbul ones. “And they would yell, ‘Ma’jer, Ma’jer,’ – a rude form of ‘muhajir’ – at us.” This is similar to “wetback” in America. He confided to me, “Even today, I worry, I might slip into the old dialect if I am tired.” Although he was a professional success, he still felt most at home with people from

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the central Balkans who understood his experiences and shared his home dialect. And dialects were not the only problem. An older gentleman at the Rumeli Association told me recently about his father, who had not known Turkish when he had come to Istanbul in the mid-1950s. Recall that the migrants were Rumeli Muslims who included Turks and Albanians, and some Macedonian-speaking Slavic Muslims. They all had to agree to declare themselves Turks when they came, but in the Balkans to say one was a Turk often implied that one was Muslim. In any case, the man’s father had been speaking Albanian on the trolley with another migrant from Macedonia. A local Turk had come up to him and told him, “Speak Turkish!” The son had understood, but his father had not. What could he do? They were on their way to a construction job where the manager was Bosnian. Since the father also knew Serbian, he understood the Bosnian manager just fine. Eventually he would learn Turkish, but it would take time. Local Turks, some of whom were jealous of the skills of the new migrants, resented these migrants. It did not help that just when the migrants were coming in the greatest numbers from former Yugoslavia, many Turkish villagers were coming to cities in Turkey from the Black Sea Coast and eastern Anatolia. These villagers were resented by the urban Turks as well. They often settled in the poorer parts of the cities – the same places that the new migrants from the Balkans settled. When I asked people to recall their earliest times in Istanbul, some just shook their heads. It had been most difficult. There had been many people to a room and they had lived in poorer areas of Istanbul.

Winter Heating, Circumcision, and “Free Migrants” Besides getting to know older migrants and talking to them, I also spent time in the archives of the association to try to understand the needs of the early migrants in the 1950s. There I found the earliest Nizamnamesi, or “Regulations,” of the association, a sort of bylaws, that included a section on the purposes of the Vardar Association:2 (a) to assure assistance to those in need of winter heating fuel, food, and shelter (b) to assure assistance to those who are ill (doctor, medicine, etc.)

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(c) to help bear the funeral expenses of those in need (d) to reach out to help those in need for winter clothing in wintertime (e) to find assistance and assure clothing, books, and school necessities for children who are studying (f) to work to assure circumcision for boys who need help and have arrived at the age of circumcision (g) in the future if it is possible, to find some small assistance to provide capital for those who have lost their capital because their work area has been closed (h) to engage in cultural activities such as sport, publication, music, and drama These are truly practical and at the same time challenging for fairly recent migrants to provide for new migrant families in a large city. Those writing these purposes knew what they themselves had experienced when they had first come to Istanbul. There is also the centuries-old precedent of helping the less fortunate that is central to Islam. The association built on both of these precedents. In particular, they pay their zekat, one of the five pillars of Islam, an annual Muslim almsgiving of about one-fortieth of one’s capital assets, to their migrant association,3 to be given out to those in need. This is not written in the regulations, but it becomes clear in the bulletins that began to be published in the early 1960s. To show they were serious with these listed purposes, what I consider the earliest photograph of the Vardar Association is one of ten men in the background with 22 young boys in circumcision outfits in the foreground. Two of the men in the center background are holding up a sewn banner of the “Vardarlılar Yardımlas¸ma Derneg˘i,” showing that “The People of the Vardar Assistance Association” have sponsored the circumcision of the young boys. It is dated 5 September 1954. In general, in Turkey boys are circumcized at anywhere from five to ten years of age and wear white outfits with hats, red sashes, and capes the day of the event. They parade around town in the outfits and are given gifts. There is a party to celebrate as well. However, with poorer boys, others may help out to defray the cost. In the case of the poor migrant boys in the early photograph, they only had white shirts and white hats rather than entire outfits. But they did have the red sash across their chests. It is an important event and a

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Figure 15 Vardar Association members with young boys on day of circumcision

serious one. The men undoubtedly recall their own su¨nnet, their own circumcision, back in Skopje. Again, this is a valuable service for the Vardar Association to provide since the migrant families probably could not afford to pay for it although it was time to do it for their sons. Along with the purposes of the Vardar Association, there is another section among the Regulations labeled “Parties and Politics” that I found most intriguing. The Association will not have relations with any [political] party, nor will it contribute to any such party. Within the Society there will be no discussion of parties or party policies. The Society most particularly will have absolutely no interest in definite economic doctrine or any facet thereof; no discussions of such topics will take place under the auspices of the Society. What is revealed here is the profoundly negative experience of the Rumeli Muslims with communism in Macedonia and their fear of being associated with it in Turkey, which was strongly anticommunist at this time in the 1950s. Many also had experience with the

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UDBA, the Yugoslav Secret Police. Under no circumstances did they want to engage in anything that could be misinterpreted in their new land. This prohibition against participation in party politics would turn out to be a wise stand for the association in Turkey in the second half of the twentieth century. In terms of the language used here, the more modern Turkish term for “association” (kurum) is used at the start, but the older, more Arabic word for “society” (cemiyet) is used in the following sentences. As the writer gets to the more important part against communism, he moves into the more Ottoman-like language in which he is more comfortable. Recall that the migrants wrote Turkish in Ottoman script until 1944, so they were still more comfortable with the older terms. As I read the regulations of the association I became curious. How did this organization come into being? Where did the Vardar Association come from? What were its antecedents? What organizational experience were members building on? I had once heard that some of the initial founders were inspired by people from Varna, a city on the Black Sea in present-day Bulgaria. My first assumption was that there was a similar association, a “hometown association,” to assist people from a specific city in their new country. Immigrants in America had these and many, particularly Jews from Eastern Europe, referred to them as landsmanshaftn, “hometown associations,” that served as benefit associations that aided transition to the new land.4 But I did not find such a precedent in Istanbul then. So I worked from what I did know about the founding of the hometown association of the people from Skopje in Istanbul. Namely, the initial meeting took place in May 1950 in the real estate office of Sami Funda in Laleli; they chose to call their association the Vardarlılar Yardımlas¸ma Derneg˘i, that is, “The People of the Vardar Mutual Assistance Association”; and they elected Hu¨dai Bukagili as president. As for Hu¨dai Bukagili, he had been born in Skopje and was the son of the sheykh of the Bukagili tekke, a Sinani5 tekke near Jahya Pasha Mosque in Skopje. He had immigrated to Turkey in the 1920s and lived and worked in Istanbul in the Covered Bazaar, where he had a shop with his three sons. He was highly respected and had been elected president of the Tradesman Association multiple times. This suggested that the organization could be affected by Sufi and certainly by guild and tradesman organizational patterns.

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The name was most interesting. Instead of calling themselves ¨ sku¨plu¨ler, that is, “The People of Skopje,” they had chosen a broader U term, “The People of the Vardar,” referring to the Vardar River, which flowed through Skopje and so included the city of Skopje, as well as the villages and towns in the region. This would be similar to “The People of the Hudson” instead of “New Yorkers.” But the Vardarlıllar Dernek only had meetings from May to July 1950. No Muslims were allowed to leave Macedonia at that time. It came to life again when Yugoslavia began allowing Muslims to leave and start emigrating to Turkey in 1953. While still looking for other hometown associations, I found instead the “Istanbul Migrants Assistance Association” that had been founded in 1948 to deal with difficulties Turks were facing in Bulgaria under communist rule. In one of its publications,6 it had a history of the group and its attempts to deal with the unforeseen level of expulsion of Turks from Bulgaria in 1950. In the introduction it noted prominently that “migration is the eternal pain of the Turkish people.”7 This publication summarized migration from the eastern Balkans to Turkey before, during, and, more recently, after World War II. Bulgaria had suddenly encouraged thousands of Bulgarian Turks in 1950 to emigrate to Turkey with no warning, and Bulgarian Turks who had come earlier to Turkey were trying to assist the newcomers. (I later learned the Bulgarians wanted the Turks’ land to promote collectivization.8) What caught my eye was that both the “Istanbul Migrants Assistance Association” and the “People of the Vardar Mutual Assistance Association” used the same final phrase in their names. And even more striking, Sami Funda was on the board of the “Istanbul Migrants Assistance Association.” Recall that it was in the office of Sami Funda that the Vardarlılar Dernek had been founded in 1950. Clearly I had found an organizational antecedent. What is also clear in a publication of the “Istanbul Migrants Assistance Association” is that while the recent Bulgarian migrants had received land in Aegean and Marmara Turkey, no future migrants would. All future migrants to Turkey would be classified as serbest go¨men, c “free migrants.” Turkey could not provide land or other services. In essence this was a call for greater organization on the part of the migrants themselves and their relatives and friends who had come earlier and knew the new country and Istanbul better.

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In fact, all the Rumeli Turks who came from Skopje were “free migrants” in that they came to where they chose and were not beholden to the state. By the same token, the state did not give them any land. At most they had a few years at the outset when they did not have to pay income taxes. When I first came to do research, one of the first things people told me was that they were serbest go¨men. c They were proud of this. As they noted, they had not been a burden on the state.

“We Met the Trains” It was not until after Tito, President of Yugoslavia, moved away from Stalin and established a more non-aligned position, and there were visits back and forth with Menderes, Prime Minister of Turkey, that Muslims from Macedonia were finally able to leave what had become intolerable conditions for many and emigrate to Turkish cities. This began in 1953, increased throughout the 1950s, and continued well into the 1960s. But was this truly a forced migration? Many Macedonian histories do not recount it that way. However, Muslim sources tell a different story. From the Muslims in Istanbul whom I studied, most felt that they had to leave Macedonia. But this did not make it easy by any means. Saying goodbye at the train station was hard. But often what was harder for the Muslims of Rumeli was the actual closing of the door of their homes for the last time. At that point the reality set in. And for many heads of households, the final decision to leave was grueling. Where the UDBA, the Yugoslav Secret Service, was involved, there was no decision to make. The families had no choice and had to leave. This was especially true in Kosova, where people were forced out explicitly. Even in Skopje, it got so when there was a knock on the door at a strange hour, men no longer answered the door – for if they did, they might not return. Instead women answered the door. They were less likely to be taken away. Still, in Macedonia it was generally less violent than in Kosova. But some families realized that their members would never be able to find work. So they were essentially pushed out. And, of course, those whose relatives had been in prison had to leave. But there were some who were in the middle. Should they leave? Many of those who had suffered in the war as forced laborers were ready to leave. And those whose family members had already left wanted to join

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them. But it still was hard to leave all that was familiar. And how soon should they go? Fahri Kaya, a well-known Turkish writer and journalist of Skopje, described the decision to leave of those who left in 1953–1967 as a “forced migration.” Emigration was our great misfortune. It was the burning wound of every Turk who lived on this earth, it was our fate that we who were born in this land were forced to live as renters here. The Balkan Turks did not want to emigrate. Who wants to leave the hearth of his father? This was not voluntary; it was a forced migration. In the Balkans there were two Balkan Wars, two World Wars, and several civil wars. In these conflicts Turks were attacked by those coming and going. Everyone wanted to take it out on the Rumeli Turks, to make them pay the bill for what the Ottomans (allegedly) had done. The psychological struggle in time grew rougher. Most of our people could not stand it.9 And once the decision had been made that a family would leave, what could they take with them? This was quite restricted. All tried to take some funds, for they did not want to be a burden on the people who had signed the guarantee for them to come in the first place. A condition of the “free migrants” was that they had to be sponsored. But where would they put these funds on their departure? Women told me how they had tried to hide some gold pieces, either in their hair or in the food they baked for the trip. One man told how he had hidden it in table legs he made. Another woman put it in her mouth and then pretended to be unable to speak for the entire train journey. All had sold their homes at a loss and then been hit with taxes. In the end most left Yugoslavia with very little money. There was wellgrounded fear of being robbed on the train by police or soldiers. Until they came to the Turkish frontier, people were afraid. And when they arrived at Sirkeci train station in Istanbul, what would happen? Those from Skopje who lived in Istanbul were equally concerned. They knew they needed to meet these new migrants at the train station, but people did not know exactly when they would arrive. Some of the “sponsors” did not even live in Istanbul. How could they

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take care of their fellow townsmen and meet them at the train station, and not jeopardize their jobs? The practical answer to this question brought the Vardar Association to life. The men who had earlier founded the Vardar Association for two months in 1950 were men from the region of Skopje who knew each other in Istanbul. It came to life again in 1953 when they realized that the only way they could make sure that there would always be someone at the train station each day would be if each person took a different day of the month. That way they would not jeopardize their jobs and they could still cover the people arriving from Macedonia. “We Met the Trains” was indeed the true re-founding mantra of their association. But they needed to do more than just meet the trains. They needed a place where families could stay in case their sponsoring family was far away or if they did not know where to go. So they cleaned out a former leather goods warehouse near Sirkeci where families could stay until they could move on to an appropriate address. Where did they do the planning for this? We know that they originally met in the real estate office of Sami Funda in Laleli on the top floor. Their second meeting place was in an empty building plot near the side door of the Valide Sultan Mosque in Aksaray. Their third meeting place, where the Vardar Association stayed for many years, was also in Aksaray, at Nalıncı C¸ıkması Number 4. They would stay in Aksaray, a central district in the old city, from 1953 until 1969. As for the founders of the Vardar Association, they are listed in the early documents along with their addresses in Istanbul. Most lived in the old city near the Covered Bazaar, and all had come in the third wave of migration from the central Balkans between the world wars, from 1926 to 1944. On the list of founders, the first eight names were listed in 1950 and the last two appended. They include: Rifat Eserova, Ragip Metiner, Hu¨dai Bukagili, Adil Peku¨stu¨n, Kadri Eris¸, Agus Sener, Kamuran Sargut, Kemal C¸ak, Hasan Yelmen, and Fevzi Tara. But what is most interesting to me is that while this list does include Hu¨dai Bukagili, the man who was president for only two months in 1950, it does not include Nurettin Keskinis, the man who was president for six years from 1953 to 1959. As a group they were largely from Skopje families and were skilled craftsmen in such fields as leatherworking (Eserova), shoemaking (Sener), quilt-making (Bu¨kagili), metal spring making (Metiner), and cloth painting (Eris¸). Many of these men had shops in Istanbul’s massive

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Covered Market or the nearby Long Market, where they worked and networked. A few were higher up on the professional level: one was an accountant (Sargut), another had a leather factory (Yelmen). There was also an importer (Peku¨stu¨n). Among the skilled tradesman, Bukagili was head of the Covered Market Association three times and mayor of Ku¨cu¨kc ekmece, a municipality within greater Istanbul. That is, he was highly regarded among other tradesmen and had local political skills. Eserova also went on pilgrimage to Mecca several times.

Fitting into Istanbul and Football The Balkan migrants were not immediately taken with Istanbul, nor, to be honest, was Istanbul all that taken with them. Despite having fled Yugoslavia, this was the time of the Cold War, and the Rumeli migrants were sometimes accused by Turks of being communists even though they had fled the communists. This was at a time when Turkey was strongly anti-communist and emphasized its membership in NATO. This was also a time of intense Turkish nationalism. Turkey had long been a nation of immigrants from different parts of the former Ottoman Empire. But the 1950s in Turkey were a time when Ottoman history was not in vogue and most Turks were not at all interested in their Ottoman past. How did the recent forced migrants from the Balkans respond to this? One response of the Vardarlılar Dernek was to join the larger “Immigrant and Refugee Associations Federation,” which included other “Turkic” groups, in 1955. It included Turkic Associations from many areas of the Turkic world whose people had similarly escaped from communist rule to settle in Turkey. These were: the Azerbaijan Assistance Association, the Western Thrace Migrant Assistance Society, the Eastern Turkistan Immigrant Society, the Migrant Assistance Association, the Uralic Assistance and Culture Association, the Crimean Turk Assistance Association, the Northern Caucasus Turkish Cultural Association, and the Turkistan Assistance Association. What these associations had in common was that their members were assumed to be of Turkic descent and had left their homelands, which were now under communist rule, to settle in Turkey. Whether joining with this larger federation of “Turkic migrants” would prove useful to the Vardar Association would remain to be seen.

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As for migrants’ initial response to Istanbul, Hidayet Ilimsever told how her family left Skopje in 1954 for Istanbul. She was nine years old at the time. She said the train trip took two full days. They were delayed and confined to the train for many hours because there had been flooding of a river. And when they finally were coming into Istanbul, the train passed some of the poorer sections of the city, Gazlıc es¸me and Zeytinburnu, and her mother saw roughly put-together homes with laundry hanging on the line. “For this I left beautiful U¨sku¨p!” she said sadly. Indeed, trains often come into large cities through neighborhoods that are not the finest in the city. But after such a long trip with delays, this scene must have been a double disappointment. Hidayet Hanım’s family took a taxi to the address given them by the oldest of their children, who had come earlier on a tourist visa to rent a place for the whole family. They got out of the taxi and then walked with all their suitcases. It could not have been easy. They ended up settling in a place where they actually had room for a garden, and Hidayet’s mother planted one as soon as possible. Since they had come relatively early, when other people came from Skopje they tended to stay with them, too, until they found a place to live. If there were enough people from one’s Balkan hometown nearby, there was less immediate loss of identity, as experienced by the engineer’s family from Mitrovice. But one of the fears in a new country and new setting is that the young people will somehow be lost to their families. They must venture out for work in settings that their families do not know. One wise decision of the Vardar Association in 1954 was to organize a football team, known as Vardarspor. This way the young men would come together, no matter where they ended up working. It fostered teamwork, which was always valuable, and reinforced the identity from the Vardar region. It also was a way to relate to the local culture of Istanbul, in which futbol was the main sport. In this the Balkans and Turkey were united. Amateur teams were popular. As for the professional football teams, affinity with them served to divide the city. Istanbul has long had three major professional football teams: Fenerbahc e, Galatasaray, and Bes¸iktas¸. Many of the migrants were fans of Fenerbahc e, which was founded in 1907 on the Asian side of the city. Its colors are yellow and dark blue. Galatasaray was actually begun in 1905 by a son of S¸emseddin Sami Bey, a remarkable Rumeli Ottoman scholar

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from Albania. Its colors are red and yellow. Bes¸iktas¸, the oldest club, was founded in 1903. Its colors are black and white; they used to be red and white but were changed in 1912 to black and white in mourning for the Balkan Wars. When I was meeting migrants from the Balkans for the first time in Istanbul, a common question I would ask the men would be what football team they rooted for. An early connecting move of migrants in relating to their new environment was to choose a team to root for. When one recent migrant told me he was a Bes¸iktas¸ fan, I was surprised. Most new migrants tended to be for Fenerbahe¸. It was rare for a recent immigrant to support Bes¸iktas¸ in Istanbul. This man was from Gostivar in Macedonia. Then it came to me. I knew about football in former Yugoslavia. “Were you a Partizan fan in Yugoslavia?” I asked. He nodded. Then I understood. They had the same colors, black and white, as Besiktas¸. But sports teams had a long history in Istanbul. In Byzantine times there used to be chariot races around the Hippodrome and the city was divided among rivalries for the Blue or the Green teams. Riots even broke out in the mid-500s during which thousands were killed and the Hagia Sophia was destroyed. The Ottomans, however, did not continue this tradition. They had ceremonial parades around the Hippodrome instead. It was not until the late 1890s that football first came to Istanbul. As for Vardarspor, the amateur football club of the Vardar Association, it was begun in 1954 and has continued to this day. The president of the association, who was elected in 2013, was a longtime member of Vardarspor. Indeed, many of the presidents and officers of the association have come into it through Vardarspor. Thus, it continues to serve its original purpose of bringing together the young men of Rumeli families, providing a vigorous activity for them, and schooling them in teamwork, after which they continue to contribute to the larger association in other ways throughout their lives. But returning to the mid-1950s, to try to better understand the context of Istanbul for the new migrants, I read Cumhuriyet, the main newspaper for Istanbul for this period. I sought out any articles on the Balkans or on migrants in Istanbul. Apart from the political articles on Western Thrace and Greece, what I found most interesting were articles on basic food shortages, on the need for more schools for the migrants,

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and on numbers of migrants arriving and expected from the Balkans. I include a sample of the articles leading up to anti-minority events of September 1955. In January 1955 there was a call for more wheat from America in Istanbul. There had been shortages of sugar as well. In February 1955, there was an article on the need for more elementary schools to cope with the growing population of migrants in certain neighborhoods.10 Two days later, a state minister was quoted as saying that since 1950, 158,000 migrants from different countries had come to Turkey. In March 1955 there was the first Congress of the “Immigrant and Refugee Associations Federation” in Aksaray. At least certain basic food and fuel supplies were later funneled through the federation to the member associations that could then give them out to their neediest families. In April there was an article on the immigrant families from Skopje coming to Istanbul. Fifty families had just arrived and 400 more families were waiting to come. That year about 50,000 immigrants were expected. There was even a Turkish student on the same train as the Skopje immigrants who reported that the families from Yugoslavia had been ill-treated. Where the train stops at different stations, the police take even more money from the immigrants. This money goes into the pockets of those in charge. This should be brought up to ‘our friend’ Yugoslavia.”11 Further, in Zeytinburnu, an area of Istanbul where many migrants had settled, it was noted there was a new school, but there were 10,000 students. Menderes, the Prime Minister of Turkey, visited Tito in Yugoslavia to affirm the three-nation pact with Greece and Yugoslavia. When Menderes returned, there were articles in the newspaper of exports of wheat and cotton, but no mention of immigrants or their abuse. In May an article noted that there were 100,000 Turks coming to Turkey from Yugoslavia, of whom 45,000 were already here. Then on 7 September 1955, the newspaper reported that martial law was declared in Istanbul and Izmir. It was the government-sponsored pogrom largely against Greeks. The newspaper reported that in different neighborhoods 500 people had been arrested and stores had been ransacked.

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The articles on the events of 6 – 7 September in the newspaper were incomplete. They wrote that when people heard that the home of Atatu¨rk had been bombed in Salonika, groups came to Istanbul yelling, “Cyprus is Turkish.” Fires broke out in churches around the city and attacks got worse along Istiklal Caddesi to the Greek Consulate, the Greek Church, and stores and homes.12 But to do justice to this blot on Turkish social history, I will present it from the point of view of two Rumeli newcomers, who were surprised and demoralized by the events.

“I’ll Take Your Husband”: Muhterem Hanım and Events of September 1955 Muhterem Hanım was married and 26 years old when she emigrated with her family from Skopje to Istanbul. She had two small children, as well as her mother-in-law and other relatives, with her. She remembered World War II well, since she had been a teenager then. But after the war she remembered the collectivization campaign and how taxes grew so high. Life was hard. There would be ten people in a family and only one had a job to support them all. I asked her when she left.13 In early September 1955 with my husband. My husband did not want to leave. He had a job as manager in a factory. People cried. But I wanted to leave. We sold the house. But still we had little money. “We can find work,” we said. We went to the train station for the 6 pm train to Istanbul. I had my mother-in-law, an elderly grandmother, and two small children with me. The train did not come. We had tickets so we stayed all night in the station with two small children. It was not easy. In the morning the train came. We were two days on the train. She explained, What had happened was the Greeks in Istanbul had taken the train to leave Istanbul. So when it finally came, it took us to Salonika. There we had to get out. We sat in groups waiting.

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A young Greek woman who spoke their kind of Istanbul Turkish asked me if I was going to Turkey. “Yes,” I said. “To Istanbul?” she asked. “Yes,” I answered. “Then I’ll take your husband and go back to Istanbul, and you take mine.” “Take him,” I said. Clearly the young Greek woman did not want to go on to Athens or wherever she was headed. She had grown up in Istanbul and had probably never been to Greece before. She was in a similar position to Muhterem Hanım, only she did not know that Muhterem Hanım was essentially leaving her home as well. Muhterem Hanım continued telling of her journey to Istanbul. Finally they put us on a train, but in wagons, not cars, and all together. We got dirty and tired. When we got to the Sirkeci Station, our aunt took us and we washed and cleaned up before we went to Bursa. It was relatives who lived in Bursa who had sent us the guarantee. We stayed with them for 15 days and then we came back to Istanbul, to Fatih. But the grandmother stayed in Bursa and died not long after the move. The reason Muhterem Hanım’s train was late is that it had become involved in the aftermath of the events of 6– 7 September 1955. These were largely anti-Greek riots in Istanbul and several other cities in Turkey during the time of Menderes in Republican Turkey. Adnan Menderes (1899–1961) was head of the Democratic Party and the Prime Minister of Turkey throughout the 1950s. His party came to power in 1950 and worked to transform Turkish agriculture and transportation. Anatolian villagers from the east and the Black Sea had begun to migrate to Turkish cities at this time, and by the mid-1950s the economy had worsened. It was in the interests of Menderes’ government to distract the public. In 1954 Greece had petitioned the United Nations to allow selfdetermination for Cyprus. Great Britain did not want this. This was before the Suez Crisis of 1956 and Britain, which had the mandate in Cyprus, wanted to stay in the eastern Mediterranean. If there were still problems, that would justify Britain remaining there. So Britain goaded Turkey into opposing Greece’s petition to the UN. In 1954 the British Ambassador to Greece even said that not much would be lost if

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something happened to Atatu¨rk’s house in Salonika. In Turkey there were groups that wanted Cyprus for the Turks. Whenever there were problems between Turkey and Greece, there were always the minority populations to take things out on: the Turks in Western Thrace or the Greeks in Istanbul. Then in late August 1955, Turkish Prime Minister Menderes claimed that the Greeks of Cyprus were planning a massacre of Turks living there. On 6 September 1955, there was news that someone had bombed Atatu¨rk’s house in Salonika. Newspapers published this news, and hundreds of rioters were bussed into Istanbul. For nine hours they rioted, destroying Greek businesses and schools, looting Greek homes, terrorizing Greek families, desecrating Greek churches, and going after Greek priests. Other non-Muslim minorities, including Armenians and Jews, also suffered destruction of businesses and homes to a lesser degree. The Turkish police stood aside and did not stop the destruction. By midnight the Turkish Army finally intervened and declared martial law. From 13 to 30 people had been killed, 73 churches were damaged or destroyed, several hundred Greek women were raped, and over 4,000 homes and over 1,000 businesses were damaged or destroyed, mostly Greek-owned. Subsequent research has shown that these events of 6 – 7 September 1955, sometimes called the “Istanbul Riots,” or “Septemvriana” in Greek, were in no way spontaneous responses to what happened to Atatu¨rk’s house. Rather, they had been carefully planned in advance by the Council for Mobilization Research (Seferberlik Tetkik Kurulu), ¨ zel Harp better known by its later name, “Special War Office” (O 14 Dairesi). This was a secret organization that NATO countries had set up to fight communism. But it had precedents in Turkey, which had earlier had secret organizations. The bombing of Atatu¨rk’s home in Salonika was actually carried out by an agent of the Turkish Special Forces. It was a set-up. The rioters had been specially bussed in from surrounding villages and towns and were to be paid, although in the end they were not paid. Even tools for destruction like shovels and picks had been brought into the city and parked in different convenient locations. Thus these anti-minority actions of 6– 7 September 1955 were the first visible signs of what many came to refer to as the “guardian state” or the “deep state.”15 This “guardian” or “deep” state was a secret organization in Turkey that

Figure 16

Hidayet Hanım with s¸ekerpare

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coordinated the police and military in creating havoc and mass violence, all in the name of protecting a deeply conservative understanding of the state. It operated from after World War II into the early 2000s. The particular anti-minority events of 1955 convinced many Greeks in Istanbul that they would never be safe in Turkey. So they took the train to Greece. That is why Muhterem Hanım’s train to Skopje had been delayed in Istanbul as it took on many Greeks who were fleeing Istanbul after the riots, and why it was rerouted directly to Salonika, where Muhterem Hanım’s train had also been rerouted. Muhterem Hanım then had to take an entirely different train to Istanbul.

Hidayet Hanım and Muslim Empathy Hidayet Hanım’s family had come to Istanbul the year before. She remembers the night of 6 September 1955. Her family had not been in Istanbul a year yet. Her father’s cousin came to their apartment door in the night, and in fright pounded on the door and woke everyone up. He explained how people that they did not know were coming to the door and certain things were happening. In their apartment building there were three families who were muhajir, that is, who were immigrants. Hidayet Hanım said that no one came to their apartment to ask them anything, but as outsiders they were fearful. Behind their apartment, though, there were Armenians. The strangers had gone to their door. But, wisely, Pamuk Hanım had taken out the Turkish flag and said they were Turkish. In this way they were saved from certain danger and harm. That same night in Kumkapı and other neighborhoods where minorities lived, they experienced great calamity. Two days later when Hidayet Hanım and her parents went to visit a cousin, she saw what she will never forget to this day. In no place was there any glass left. The curtains were outside the windows. Rolls of material were out in the street while mud was inside the homes. On the top floor of an apartment an icebox had gotten stuck in the window, half outside, half inside. The Greeks and Armenians who lived in this neighborhood were forced to sell their property and belongings at nowhere near their value.16 But what is important for this book is Hidayet Hanım’s comment on this:

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Turks who have lived in the Balkans through history have lived through many such similar events. We know these human dramas too well.17 I want to emphasize that the Muslims who remained in the Balkans after the Ottoman defeat in 1912, and lived under Serbian occupation and domination, learned what it was like to be a minority. They pulled together and developed community skills, but that does not mean they did not suffer. The empathy that Hidayet Hanım shows and that she ascribes to other Rumeli Muslims as well for the non-Muslim minorities – here Greek and Armenian – make clear that they had learned well what it meant to be a minority. In no way was she siding with the Muslim rioters in these activities. And this was the common attitude among other muhajirler I talked with. They often worked for minorities when they first came to Istanbul. Some of the Prizrenliler lived in Balat and knew Jews there. Many worked in the Covered Bazaar with Greeks or Armenians or Jews. They were comfortable with people of other religions since they had worked with them in the Balkans. The Muslim migrants from Rumeli came from a more cosmopolitan Ottoman world. The events of 6 –7 September 1955 were just more of the destruction of this world in Istanbul. Certainly these events are a blot on the history of modern Turkey. Adnan Menderes was hanged in 1961, but not principally for these activities, although they did not help him, to be sure. The military prosecutor at the trial, Admiral Fahri C¸o¨ker, saved photographs and documents of the events of 6 – 7 September 1955 and requested that there be an exhibit 25 years after his death. This indeed took place in 2005, but the “guardians of the state,” or rabid nationalists, trashed the exhibit. Still, there have been other Turkish public accounts – for example, the Turkish documentary by Can Du¨ndar, entitled Utanc Gecesi (“Night of Shame”). There are, of course, accounts in Turkish historical journals, as well as thoroughly researched Greek sources.18 When I was doing the research for this book, I lived in a former minority community on the Asian side of Istanbul. It had two Greek churches, a Greek shrine and a former Greek school, an Armenian church, a Jewish synagogue, a large Jewish cemetery and a Greek cemetery, as well as a mosque. Older people told me what had happened

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there in 1955 when there had been many Greeks, Jews, and Muslim citizens who had lived there. Men from distant villages who had been bussed in had started to come en masse from the hill above down the steep road into the mixed minority town. It did not look good. And so one of the Muslim men of the town put on his Turkish naval officer’s uniform and met them part way up the road. He announced with authority, “There are no minorities here.” The bussed-in villagers had already burned the small Greek school. But as the Muslim naval officer advanced toward them, they backed up. Clearly they did not know the region well. How could a Muslim naval officer lie to them? So they left. And all the minorities of the town stayed inside quaking, but they were safe. And the churches and the synagogue and the cemeteries were also safe. On the European side of Istanbul, a Turkish Air Force captain, Res¸at Mater, performed a similar action, and saved neighboring Greeks in his house. He then put on his uniform and built a barricade in the street. When the mob saw this they passed by. His son still has ties with those he saved who later went to Greece. I am sure there are other Muslims who were appalled by the actions against the minority populations of Istanbul and Izmir and Iskenderun, and their businesses. The recent migrants from the Balkans, however, could relate all too well, for they themselves had been minorities who had been targeted by Christian paramilitaries before the Balkan Wars, in Edirne after the siege, in Salonika after the Greeks took over, during the Balkan Wars and World War I, in Slavicization programs in Bulgaria and in Yugoslavia between the wars, in World War II, and in collectivization and anti-religion programs in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia after World War II. It was all too familiar. And it continues today in Macedonia.19 Besides the human loss, it was a loss for the city of Istanbul as well.

The 1960s: From Bulletins to a New Name As might be expected, there were major political problems at the end of Menderes’ term. Indeed, there was a coup in 1960. Interestingly, there is a gap in leadership of the Vardarlılar Dernek around the time of this coup. Nurettin Keskinis’ term as president ended in August of 1959,

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while a new president of the association was not officially elected until March 1964, well after things had settled down after the coup, although they were still active in assistance work throughout this period. This sort of gap in named leadership appeared to be a coping strategy in difficult times. Another president was elected in 1965: Hu¨seyin Baykal, a teacher who was also a hafız. He was followed by Dr. Erdem Sezen, who served from 1967 to 1969. Like the others, Dr. Erdem Sezen was from Skopje. He was a doctor of internal medicine. There are several differences in the leadership of the Vardarlılar Association in its first two decades. In the 1950s the presidents were from the third wave of migration between the world wars, while the presidents in the 1960s were from the fourth wave of migration and had come after World War II. They also had terms of more regular length. Also in the 1960s, the first bulletins of the association were printed and distributed. The membership continued to increase as more families came from former Yugoslavia. The aid and assistance programs became better organized. And finally, in 1967, there was a major change in the actual name of the organization to better represent the wider membership. The first bulletin, “Vardarlılar Bu¨lteni,” a four-page newsletter, was published in February 1962. On the top right of the first page was a quote from Atatu¨rk: Immigrants are the national memories of our lost countries. K. Atatu¨rk Here Atatu¨rk was referring to lost Ottoman provinces of the Caucasus, the Crimea, the Levant, and of course the Balkans, where he himself had been born and raised. The bulletin noted that in the early years of the association there were 5,000 members. And although people continued to come from Yugoslavia to Turkey, the membership had not continued to increase. Still the decision had been taken that they would assist any migrant, whether member or not. A purpose of the bulletin, then, was for fellow townsmen to understand the need to become members. What is especially useful about the bulletins for understanding the association is that they confirm regular practices of the group. Many of these practices I was told orally, but they are confirmed in writing. The

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bulletins also present news of particular years that I would not have been aware of. And, of course, bulletins document lists of officers and contributors. For example, there is a list of the 29 members of the Executive Council of 1962 that shows that the majority are no longer from Skopje, but rather that it is widened to other cities in the central Balkans. There are also lists of districts in Istanbul where the children live who receive new clothing for Ramadan. In 1962 the numbers of children receiving this clothing were 28 girls and 103 boys. This allows comparisons over the years. As for health care, the 1964 bulletin noted that Dr. Erdem Sezen was in charge of assisting members in both Zeytinburnu, where he had his practice, and in Sag˘malcılar. Both areas were poor areas of Istanbul. Later that decade the poor quality of the water in Sag˘malcılar led to an outbreak of cholera. The reputation of the area suffered so much that in 1970 they renamed it Bayrampas¸a to try to wipe out the negative connotation. The bulletins noted that the Vardarlılar Association offered weekly courses in German, French, and English, free of charge. The 1960s were a time when there was work in Western Europe, especially in West Germany. Turks were taking advantage of this since the pay was much better than what they could get in Turkey. In recognition of this, the bulletin notes that the classes are for both workers and students. I learned of Balkan immigrants to Turkey going on to West ¨ zkilic of the Kosova Germany for work in the 1960s from Ismail O 20 Prizrenliler Derneg˘i. Ismail Bey was most knowledgeable about the experience of Rumeli Turks in Istanbul, since his family had come from Prizren in Kosova in the 1940s. He told me of the family of an uncle of his with four or five children. The uncle was a tailor, and he bought a building in Balat in Istanbul with a room for each son and his bride. The sons would work all week and give all the funds they earned to their father, who was authoritarian. He would then give them back say ten lira for expenses. When the sons thought of their futures, they could not see themselves making much money. So one son went to West Germany. This was the 1960s. There was a need for workers there. The son figured he could come back if it did not work out. His father was angry. Then five months later, he sent for his wife to come, and his other brothers followed.

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Another account of this was from Mukaddes Hanım.21 She, too, noted that many of the children of the Balkan immigrants went to Germany. She said they wanted to make money and the wages in Germany were higher than those in Turkey. She said she considered going to Germany as a guest worker to work in a factory to make money faster for the apartment she wanted to buy in Istanbul. Recall she was an elementary school teacher and salaries of such teachers were not high. But Mukaddes’ brother told her, “No Muko, do not go. You are too citified. You will spend your money on going to the opera and trips in Germany. You can save money better here.” She told me that her brother was right. So she stayed in Turkey. Instead she used creative financing so that for every 10,000 lira she put in the bank, she would take out loans, and eventually she was able to buy her own apartment in Fatih without going to Germany. On the front page of the last bulletin of the 1960s is a greeting for Kurban Bayramı, the Sacrifice Holiday. This is the other main Islamic holiday after Ramadan and suggests that the bulletin tended to be published after either of the two main annual holidays. In the next two pages is a moving tribute to one man, “our dear fellow townsman” Ziya Ilhan Zaimog˘lu, a member of the Vardarlılar Executive Council, who had died the previous August while visiting his mother’s grave in Izmir. He was middle-aged, so it was doubly unexpected. Death in an immigrant community is hard to bear. Some might think that people who have experienced much loss would become inured to it. And indeed the Rumeli Muslims had experienced significant loss of family members during World War II and the ensuing civil war in Yugoslavia. The imposition of communism was brutal and the migration to Turkey was especially hard on older people, who often died soon after coming to Turkey. However, people who have already lost their homes, what was familiar, and family members through migration find other loss especially difficult. Still, Islam teaches people to be accepting of the will of God. However, the loss of Ziya Bey was a special loss to the Vardar community in Istanbul. It was not just because he was from Skopje originally or that he was a migrant like themselves. Rather, he had played an important role in the early years when they had come in the 1950s.

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Ziya Ilhan Zaimog˘lu had come to Turkey before World War II. What was remarkable about Ziya Bey was how he responded to people who came in the fourth wave of migration. He insisted on aiding the new migrants and refused to take funds from them. But much more than this, he enjoyed their company. He was also a poet. There are two essays by association members that were read at his memorial and a poem in his memory, all of which are included in the bulletin. We learn that when Ziya Bey first came to Turkey from Skopje he was a quilt-maker. Again, Muslims in Skopje under the Serbs had not been allowed higher education, but they had acquired craft skills. So when Ziya Bey came to Turkey, he had studied to become an attorney. And, of course, writing poetry was something that he always worked on. But more important was what one man wrote about Ziya Bey: The closeness that we had hoped to find in Turkey, not only did we not find, in its place, people made fun of our language. And yet there was one among us, from the Motherland [Macedonia], who took pleasure in being with us, and who was sad when we were sad, and with compassionate kindness protected us. In no other place do I find such acknowledgement of what it was truly like when people first came. Recall the young boy from Mitrovice who remembered people making fun of the Turkish of his family. But it must have been worse for adult Turkish speakers from Skopje, people who had spoken Turkish all their lives and expected to be accepted and valued in Istanbul. To be laughed at because of their language – that must have been a shock, and as adults, it must have been most difficult to change. This was another strong reason for the association as a place where people did not make fun of your language. Ziya Bey was a man who had come to Turkey earlier. He undoubtedly was bi-dialectal. He enjoyed being with the people from Skopje and could speak their dialect of Turkish. It probably reminded him of his parents. He remembered their experience and, as was written in his memorial, “protected them with compassionate kindness.” And, finally, there is a poem in honor of Ziya Ilhan Zaimog˘lu by Idris Ahmet Pura. Note the custom of working the name of the poet, Pura, into the first line of the last stanza of the poem. And note that the old ¨ sku¨p, is used. Turkish name for Skopje, U

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Do not Flow Brother Vardar! – for Z. I. Zaimog˘lu – In the middle of U¨sku¨p The Vardar passes with great force, Onward while fading fast. Do not flow Brother Vardar, I say. Is there a flag flying in the fortress, A muezzin in the minaret, Where is Sultan Murat?22 What little my eyes can see. Is Mount Vodna23 where it should be, What is Gazibaba24 doing? This is all a dream to me, My eyes cannot distinguish. Pura I am said to be, so saddened, I wander, here, crestfallen. ¨ sku¨plu¨, my fellow U ¨ sku¨plu¨ Oh my fellow U So deeply I miss you. The following year, on 16 April 1967, the Vardarlılar Mutual Assistance Association had an annual meeting, but there is no bulletin on this meeting. Instead I found an incomplete article about the meeting in an Istanbul immigrant newspaper, Rumeli and Anadolu Postaları.25 According to this article about the 1967 Vardarlılar Association meeting, two events occurred. Dr. Erdem Sezen was elected general president. His photograph is on the first page next to the article with his new title. He would be president from April 1967 to 1969. But more interesting than a new president is the new name of the association. This is in the title of the article on the front page of the newspaper in big bold letters: “‘Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association’ Historic Congress.” The article begins with the old name, but the headline tells the new one. The “Vardarlılar Dernek” has changed its name! It is now the “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association.” Notice the distinctions made in this change.

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First, instead of the “Vardarlılar,” they are now “the Rumeli Turks.” Many people in Turkey did not know where the Vardar was or that it was a river. And many members were not from the Vardar region. They were from a wider region of the central Balkans. So, for both these reasons, the “Vardar” needed to go. “The Rumeli Turks” is superior for several reasons. First, there is “Turks” in the name. That goes well with nationalist feeling in Turkey at that time. All the Albanians, Slavic Muslims, or those of mixed ancestry could easily be subsumed in “Rumeli Turks.” Rumeli, after all, was the Ottoman name for the Balkans. And certainly all the members are from the Balkans. “Rumeli” also has the positive association with “Rumeli Turkish” music, which is appreciated by most Turks in Turkey. It will also give a name to folklore groups who may not have known what to call themselves. The new name also adds the term “Culture.” That is wise, for it reminds the members that they are not just concerned with food and clothing for the adjustment period. But for cultural reasons, the association has much to offer other generations as well. The music part of the association will prove especially important in this. And “Mutual Support” will take on a more general understanding as the community matures and as women become more active members. It is different from “mutual assistance.” In Turkish, the term “dayanıs¸ma” could be translated as “shared support” or even “solidarity.” All in all, the decision in 1967 to change the name from the “People of the Vardar Mutual Assistance Association” to the “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association” was a wise decision. It was much more inclusive. It boded well for the future of the organization.

CHAPTER 6 THE RUMELI TURKS MATURE IN A TIME OF COUPS

The maturing of the organization is apparent from the bulletins of the 1970s. Or as they put it themselves, “As a result of the large number of emigrants and the increase in their pain and problems, the association became more systematic in its work.”1 They also appeared to be ahead of their times in two interesting ways. The new name they had selected for their association in 1967 harkened back to Ottoman times when southeastern Europe under Ottoman rule was known as Rumeli. In the following decade, in the late 1980s, a sort of neo-Ottomania would surface in Turkey that continues to this day. And in the bulletins of the 1970s, there were prominent articles on Islamic topics. Again this predated the more public space accorded Islam in the later 1980s and that has continued. Music gained prominence as a major cultural activity of the association. The musical chorus took off in the 1970s. It gave regular concerts which, along with weekly singing, have continued as a central feature of the association to this day. What is most intriguing is that these concerts and singing consist of both Rumeli songs and of the challenging Tu¨rk Sanat Mu¨zig˘i, that is classical Turkish music, which was the music of the Ottoman court. Meanwhile the association carried on its usual charitable activities. Yet the question remained how the association would cope with the ups and downs of the Turkish state through increasingly politically polarized times. There was another coup in 1971. Most significant, though, was its

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survival during the time of the 1980 coup, when all political parties, as well as voluntary societies and associations, were closed by the state.

Maturing and Ahead of Their Times in Ottomanism and Islam As a sign of the maturing of the organization, there were four presidents in the 1970s, each of whom had approximately two terms. There were also two others who had shorter terms that looked like “terms of honor” for people who had wanted to be president but for whatever reason had never been elected to full terms and so were given terms of four months each. I see this as a sign of maturing in that they were able to change the top leadership position with no trouble. Such a position in an immigrant community carries much prestige. Different people bring different skills to such a position. The “honorary terms” also show sensitivity to people who have been contributing in other ways and the wish to publically reward them. The association bulletins in the 1970s are more substantial than the earlier bulletins from the 1960s. They are generally ten to 12 pages long. They include better black and white photographs – of poor children receiving new clothes at Ramadan outside the Rumeli center in Aksaray, of Vardarspor, their football team, and of the musical chorus of the association. At the end of the bulletins, the lists are not just of those who donate funds with amounts. The lists also include hometowns of the children to whom new clothing was given at Ramadan. Bookkeeping skills have improved. There are also articles of substance. The first article on the first page of the earliest association bulletin from the 1970s is on Turkish culture in Rumeli.2 It is the first bulletin after the name change and so is the first public article of the association to document the change. Clearly the article was meant to help explain why the association changed its name in 1967 from the “People of the Vardar Mutual Assistance Association” to the “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association.” It has an activist message that was unknown to most Turks at this time. The article recounts how 500 years ago Turkish culture came to Rumeli in every city and town, as documented in archives as well as by important architectural monuments. However, in the previous 30 to 40 years, that is, from the 1930s to the 1940s, there had been hostility (in

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the Balkans) toward mosques, fountains, hamams, and other historic monuments – so much so that some had been destroyed, others appropriated, and some had roads constructed where they used to be. To make this known, the “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association” had gone into action. The article continues that until this time there had not been a work to make known to Europeans the great cultural works of the Turks in Rumeli; rather people wrote of “the Turkish barbarian.” Instead the Yugoslavs, the Bulgars, and the Greeks, in their tourist publications fabricate false ideas. They have created institutes to further this on an international scale. Our association, through its cultural activities, step by step, will work to bring out, in full detail, in a book, and make known the works of Turkish culture in Rumeli.3 What the Rumeli bulletin wrote in this article I have seen in my travels in Kosova and Macedonia and have read about in recent histories. But in the 1970s it would have been almost impossible to find this readily documented. Local city histories noted much later (in 2011) how Ottoman mosques were used as ammunition storehouses during the world wars by Slavic armies4 and some, like the Burmali Camii in Skopje, had been destroyed. After World War II, Yugoslav communists found ways to destroy former monuments of Muslim culture, particularly mosques from Ottoman times in the cities of Prishtina, Mitrovice, Prizren, Bitola, and Ohrid. They would make parks where Muslim schools had been, or turn hamams into art galleries. The famous Stone Bridge across the Vardar River in Skopje, which is the symbol of the city and which was built by the Ottomans during the reign of Fatih Sultan Mehmed (1451 and 1469) is now, according to the Slavic Macedonians, a “reconstruction,” with the original attributed to the Romans. The Ottoman inscription was pulled down. The migrants knew that Ottoman culture and its works in the Balkans, what they referred to here as “Turkish culture from Rumeli,” was being attributed to other cultures, or it was being destroyed. This was their heritage. It was also the heritage of people in Istanbul and all Turkey. However, Turkey at that time had little interest in the Ottoman world. Atatu¨rk had set people to looking away from their past. How could the

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migrants from Macedonia and Kosova alert people to what was happening to these monuments? One way was to let modern-day Turks know that Rumeli Turks still existed. Maybe the Ottoman Empire was gone, but the people from its past still lived on. “We are those Turks,” they declared in changing the name of their association from “people of the Vardar Valley.” And Rumeli Turks of course included Albanians, Bosniaks, Pomaks, Turks, Yo¨ru¨ks, and other Muslims who had lived in southeast Europe and culturally were Ottoman. As Atatu¨rk himself stated, and the association quoted on the top of the first page of every bulletin, “Immigrants are the national memories of our lost countries” (Go¨cmenler kaybedilmis¸ u¨lkelerimizin milli hatıralarıdır). Or as I see them, they are “heirs of the lost realm.” They had retained much Ottoman culture that had disappeared in modern Turkey. In the urban centers of the central Balkans, places like Prizren and Bitola, U¨sku¨p and Gostivar, Ottoman culture was alive and well. When migrants from these centers came to urban Turkey, they brought with them the older cosmopolitan Ottoman understandings of tolerance for different religious groups. They had always lived and worked with Christians and were multilingual. They maintained Ottoman foods, home life, exquisite needlecraft, and conservative social structure. When neo-Ottomania first came to the fore in Turkey in the late 1980s, partly as a sort of novel tourist attraction, “a heightened recycling of Ottoman goods, buildings, discourses, and performance practices for both tourist and local consumption,”5 many people in the industry did not know they had “real Ottomans” in various neighborhoods in Istanbul and Izmir and Bursa. Interestingly, this neo-Ottomania crossed both secular and Islamic groups. It was not that the migrants were prefiguring a new cultural trend consciously. It was who they were. Their name was a beginning to calling attention to this heritage. The Rumeli migrants also brought with them their quiet devotion to Islam. It had been a defining part of their Ottoman culture – in their daily, annual, and lifelong ways and practices. European sociologists who continue to try to measure Muslim religious adherence by mosque attendance6 are deeply wrong here. Not only do women generally not attend mosques, but for men, while more important, it is not sufficient in defining religiosity. Further, in their Muslim religiosity, the migrants were at odds with Turkish secular

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culture when they first came in the 1950s. But since it was expressed most often in giving to those in need, it caused few problems. The bulletins from the 1970s included articles of substance from a prayer leader, Duahan Adem, or Prayer-leader Adem, who just happened to be the “undisputed finest reciter” of mevlid prayers, the classic memorial prayer that almost defines the Rumeli community. He was also a good writer and clear thinker. These articles reflect well on the Rumeli Association and show how its activities of giving clothing and food to the poor are basic Muslim values. One article is entitled “Unity in Islam.”7 It was published in December 1970, four months before a second political coup when the armed forces again took over the government in Turkey at a time of greatly increased public violence between leftists and rightists. The article focuses on the importance of unity, and how all nations have a need for unity. This is supported by verses from the Qur’an against fragmenting, or splitting. Another article on Islam by Prayer-leader Adem, entitled, “The Importance of Assistance in Islam,”8 came out in the bulletin in 1972. The article has a deeply moral focus. Early on, readers are urged not to break the brotherly bonds between rich and poor. When your neighbor is hungry, it is not possible to eat your fill. And he who does good, who likes to help, no matter his sins, he will enter paradise. Similarly, a stingy person, no matter how much he prays, will be thrown into hell. A 1975 article by Prayer-leader Adem is entitled “A Look at the Requirements of Islam and the Sacrifice Holiday.”9 It came out around the time of Kurban Bayramı, the Muslim “Sacrifice Holiday” that commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail. It begins with the confession of faith, followed by the requirements of worship in Islam, sometimes referred to as the “pillars of Islam.” These are explained clearly and include: fasting and how it not only awakens higher thoughts but it also reminds us of the conditions of poorer folk, prayer, pilgrimage, and zekat – almsgiving from one’s accumulated wealth each year for the poor. A goal of zekat is to become more generous. What is especially compelling is the critique of class warfare in the context of discussion of zekat. As the wealthier person gives to the poorer one, a bond is formed and class warfare is turned upside down. Life is not merely the material, and Muslims need each other. Prayer-leader Adem

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goes on to state that fasting is not merely a diet, praying is not just bending down, pilgrimage is not just a tourist trip. This brings him to consider the Sacrifice Holiday. We can divide the sacrifice meat of our holiday into three parts: to give to the poor, to offer to our friends, and to be eaten in our home with our family. If we do this, we will have done our duty and reached happiness. Yet at the same time, we must not forget those who have no shoes, who do not have a coat, who lack adequate medicines. The “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association” helps us in this. And if you will remember to save the hide of the animal you sacrifice for the holiday, and donate it to the Rumeli Association, they can use it to give added assistance to the poor. May your holiday be blessed.10 Except for the implied critique of communism, this is orthodox Muslim teaching. The bulletins always also include a notice on the Mevlevi holiday of S¸eb-i Arus in December as well. This is a Sufi holiday commemorating when Jelaleddin Rumi passed from this world in 1273 in Konya. Many Ottomans were both Sunni Muslims and at the same time belonged to Sufi orders. The Republic of Turkey made the Sufi orders illegal in 1925. Atatu¨rk’s “reforms” sought to break the power of Muslim religious leaders and to turn Turkey’s face to the west. Included in this was the change of alphabet from the Arabic script to the Latin script in 1928. The immigrants from the Balkans had not taken part in these secular initiatives. They continued to write Turkish in Arabic script until 1944. They had Sufi orders beyond then as well. When they came to Istanbul from Skopje they brought with them their understanding of Islam as a lived religion without overtones of secularism. Some continued quietly in their Sufi practices. Political Islam came out in the open in Turkey in 1973 with Erbakan as leader of the National Salvation Party. Modern Turkey had always been largely Muslim and its leaders Muslim. Erbakan was part of a ¨ zal, a known coalition government and not particularly effective. But O member of the Sunni Naks¸ibandi Sufi Order, came to power in the 1980s. He was followed by Erdog˘an in the 1990s, who was even more overt in his political Islam.

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The importance of Islam to the emigrants from the Balkans from the time of their entry to Istanbul in the 1950s was in continuity with their Ottoman traditions, very different from this newer politicized Islam, although their women, too, had covered their heads until the communists came. But for Rumeli Turks, Islam was a lived Islam, not so focused on visual symbols. Rather, it defined their annual calendar, reinforced their community solidarity, and fostered their commitment to giving to the less fortunate among them – all of which were naturally replicated in their association.

Music: “Food for the Soul” Also from their earliest days, music was important to members of the association. Like Islam, music was part of their culture, long held dear by Rumeli Turks. And since music is the most portable of the arts, it is not surprising that it played an important role in their community in Istanbul. When I arrived in Istanbul, there was singing three times a week at the center and annual concerts performed at the Atatu¨rk Concert Hall in Taksim Square in central Istanbul. More informally, singing of Rumeli songs would burst out on any trip with members. On the first trip I took with the women’s group of the association, we went by bus in winter for many hours to, of all places, a ski resort. No, the emigrant women did not ski, but someone had gotten a good rate at the resort and the women were of a mind for a trip, and so we went. On the way we stopped for prayer, to drop off used clothing, and for lunch. And we sang. The next day at the ski resort we drank sahlep, a winter drink with orchid root in it, and then walked in the snow and sang some more. The song I remember most was “Vardar Ovası,” “The Plains of the Vardar.” As we were singing, one woman slipped in the snow. Then another fell down, too. Thankfully no one was hurt, so we just kept on singing. Many Rumeli songs are dialogic quatrains with refrains. Most are love songs. Some are songs of gurbet, that is, songs of longing for one’s homeland. Some are soldiers’ songs, for many soldiers came from Rumeli or were posted there, and some are songs of cities or other places in Rumeli. But for the emigrants and their children, all have the association with their Rumeli homeland and with their families, from

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whom they learned the songs. To Americans, many have a most haunting “minor key” quality. In early 2008 I attended a concert of the Rumeli chorus of the association that took place in the most prominent convention hall in Istanbul – the Atatu¨rk Center in Taksim Square. Clearly, the association had moved up from the days when their concerts were performed in wedding salons. But the concert had a similar structure to concerts from the earlier decades, with first a longer classical Turkish music section, followed by Rumeli songs. The concert began with the long section of classical Turkish music. There were seven beste, or melodies, with gu¨fte, or lyrics, set to them. Neither the musicians, who played violins, clarinet, kanun (a large sort of zither), tanbur (a long-necked lute), and drums, nor the chorus resorted to scores. They all knew their music by heart. At the end of this section, they sang the familiar classical song, “At Heybeli we went out in the moonlight every night,” and the audience sang along. This was followed by a new oratorio with words by the famous poet from U¨sku¨p, Yahya Kemal. Then there was an intermission. After the intermission there were three classical solo sections by members of the choir, beautifully sung. There was a full choir piece. An advertised solist sang five songs. But then came what everyone had been waiting for – the Rumeli songs. They were sung by the choir, with the audience all singing along. People had told me that they kept the Rumeli songs for last so people would stay to the end. In the late spring of 2008 I went on an association-sponsored trip back to the Balkans with two busloads of members. One evening we had dinner outside in the old Turkish Bazaar of Skopje. It was a typical Balkan dinner, beginning with salad and then a Skopje specialty of baked beans in a ceramic bowl, followed by meat plates of liver, ko¨fte, sausage, and cabbage. For dessert, there was kayma
ina, c a sort of cre`me caramel. And then we sang Rumeli songs together. The local musicians got set up as we were eating dinner. They were either very young or very old. The two generations in the middle were missing; I guessed they had emigrated. The musicians played stringed instruments – violins and ouds – and drums, and especially the old men sang their hearts out. As soon as they began, people started clapping. The songs they played were the Rumeli songs in Turkish that everyone knew and sang. First

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napkins came out that people waved in time to the music, then they graduated to scarves, then to shawls. People stood up at their tables and clapped in place. Soon we were dancing in lines as well. Whenever a favorite song was being played, a woman near me would call her husband on her cell phone and hold it so he could hear the music back in Turkey. They played on, and people sang and danced. They played songs of ¨Usku¨p and of Rumeli, Turkish songs that everyone knew. And all the songs were different – that is, none were repeated, except two songs, one at the beginning and one near the end. The one near the beginning that was repeated was “Vardar Ovası,” the one I had first heard on the trip to the ski resort. But the one that was repeated near the end was a love song that had been a favorite of Atatu¨rk, “Kırmızı Gu¨lu¨n Alı Var,” “There is Red on the Crimson Rose.” Everyone loved it as well. It is such a tragic song. What is not told in the song, but only hinted at, is the young bride who waits for her husband to come home from the war. Her mother-in-law waits for her son, too. One day the mother-in-law goes again to the train station and as usual does not see her son. But when she comes to the house, she finds her daughter-in-law in bed with a man. On the side table by them is a bouquet of crimson roses. She takes the gun and shoots them. Then she realizes to her horror it is her son. On the crimson rose is their blood. In a sense the muhajirler were returning through music with all their hearts. It even rained a little but no one seemed to notice. The older musicians were deeply moved as well. Late in the night, by the time people had to get on the buses to go back to the hotel, some were speaking in the local Rumelian dialect of Turkish again. The singing had brought them back to how they used to talk before they had emigrated to Turkey years earlier. Some were happier than I had ever seen them. Rumeli music and songs are precious to the emigrants. From the beginning of the association in the 1950s, one of the founders, Alus¸ S¸ener, was known for being devoted to music. And they were fortunate to have both a musician and teacher, S¸u¨kru¨ Derya, who, together with S¸ener, promoted music in the early years of the association. But when these two passed on, there seems to have been a gap. According to an early bulletin in 1964, the association offered music lessons at the center every Tuesday and Friday at eight in the evening. And by 1966, the association bulletin reported that the music lessons

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had matured into a musical chorus under the composer Arif Sami To¨ker. Thirty-one students, both men and women, came on Sunday afternoons and Thursday evenings to sing and learn to play different instruments, including the saz, a sort of lute; the violin; the cu¨mbu¨s, similar to a mandolin; and the kanun, a 72-string zither. They performed two concerts that year. It is around this time that Bestekaˆr Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
, that is “Composer” or “Melody-Maker” Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
, came on the scene for the Rumeli Association. He was described in the bulletin as a “well-known teacher” who had formed a music group of 20 young people who work without pause. They were preparing to perform Rumeli tu¨rku¨leri, that is, Rumeli songs, on the Istanbul Radio. Across the following bulletins of the 1970s, there is growing pride in the musical group and its performances. Music became a major news item with photographs of the music director conducting his young chorus and musicians. There was even a photograph of the music director and chorus taken at the Hilton Hotel, Istanbul’s first modern hotel, a most prestigious place for a concert. In the bulletin for 1975 there is another entire page devoted to the musical contribution of the association. They perform classical Turkish music the last Sunday of every month at the Gu¨l Wedding Salon. It is clear that the new music director had brought sophisticated knowledge of Turkish classical music, skill in teaching, artistry, and discipline, as well as connections with professional musicians in Istanbul to the program. But who was this remarkable Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
? And why was he such a good match with the Rumeli Dernek? When I was going through a binder on the music chorus in the association’s basement library, Necati Bey came down and I asked him about Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
. He found a large book by Eric
for me in which there was a short autobiography.11 I learned that Eric
himself also came from Rumeli. He was born in 1914 in Iskec
e, a city in Western Thrace on the Aegean coast that had been Ottoman from 1361 to 1912. After 1912 the Bulgarians and the Greeks fought over it until it was finally awarded to the Greeks in 1920. The Greeks called it Xanthi, but according to the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923, Muslims were allowed to remain there, and so his family stayed. However Eric
’s father, who was a hafız and was head of the Turkish school in Iskec
e, was imprisoned by the Greeks in Athens in 1921.

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I also found photographs whose captions noted that Eric
’s father had been condemned to death by the Greeks in March 1924. In one photograph a tall dignified man in long robes, listed as the former head of the Turkish school in Xanthi, presumably Eric
’s father, is standing in front of Singor Prison in Athens with 15 other Turkish leaders, beys and muftis, all of whom had been condemned to capital punishment at this time. In 1926 Eric
started studying music from Udi Dimitro Bu¨yu¨k Serkis. He learned to play the oud and he learned a form of musical notation from Serkis. This cannot have been popular with Eric
’s family. How could the son of a hafiz and the former head of the Muslim school study music with a Greek Christian, let alone consider becoming a musician? This was not a profession that would have been seen as appropriate. Did Eric
study music to recover from what happened to his father? We cannot know. As I was reading through the binder, several older men came down to the basement of the center. They speculated that Eric
must have had to sneak out to study music. In any case, this was a time of change. And young Eric
would prove to be dedicated and have talent. Still, conditions for Muslims were not good in Western Thrace under Greek rule. So with World War II and the German invasion, Eric
and his family emigrated to Turkey in 1941. We do not know how his family survived those difficult early years. But we do know that in 1949 he was accepted by the Turkish Music Conservatory, where he studied and worked with leading musical scholars. In 1952, Eric
started the first radio conservatory chorus in Turkey. While his first love was classical Turkish music, he had no aversion to modern media and worked well with both radio and, later, television. Eric
specialized in Tu¨rk Sanat Mu¨zig˘i, which would translate literally as “Turkish High Art Music” or “Classical Turkish Music.”12 It can also be understood as “Classical Ottoman Music,” which I find culturally descriptive. It was the music of the Ottoman court from about 1400 to 1826, and was also the music of Sufi centers and other centers of Ottoman culture. The songs are in Ottoman Turkish – a Turkish full of Persian phrasal constructions and Arabic words. This classical Turkish music, a complex older music, was what Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
eventually taught the emigrant chorus. Music was already an important part of their home culture. To sing this older music

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emphasized their common Ottoman roots; it also thereby served as a cultural legitimizer for the recent Balkan emigrants. In Turkey there is an ongoing appreciation of the older classical Turkish music. But it has had discontinuities, both at the court when it fell into disuse and in the Turkish Republic for a period after Atatu¨rk passed away, though he liked Ottoman secular music and had leading singers of it, Munir Nurettin Selc
uk and cantor Isak Algazi, perform for him at Yıldız Palace.13 It is both instrumental and sung. The musical interludes and the singers complement each other but do not work in harmony in the Western sense. For a classical performance, known as a fasil, there is an instrumental frame or prelude ( pes¸rev) and postlude. In between, sung sections alternate with instrumental improvisations, or taksims, that use the same mode, or makam, throughout. The makams are traditional and numerous, although only about 20 are generally used. On Turkish radio one can always find a station with classical Turkish music. I remember in 1985 there was even a program on television that was modeled on the American program “Name that Tune.” There were, however, some major differences. For one, it was called “Name that Makam.” For another, the contestants were never wrong. And for a third difference, when someone won, and everyone did, each contestant was not given a television, or a trip to Florida. No, when a contestant won, the prize was to sing a favorite classical Turkish song on television. Everyone was happy. More recently, in Prizren, Kosova, in the Balkans, in the summer of 2013 during Ramadan, a local Melami Sufi group performed this music for me on a very hot day. I was honored. It continues to speak to people who appreciate the beauty of the different modes and the messages of spiritual love in many of its songs. Returning to the association bulletins, in 1978 there were several articles on the musical activities of the association as well as articles on classical Turkish composers. One of these was by Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
on the seventeenth-century composer Hafız Post. He wrote on Post because the winter concert that year began with a work by him. Eric
explained that Post had been born in Istanbul in one of the greatest times of classical Ottoman music. There is a poem by Yahya Kemal, “Old Music,” in which figure the late seventeenth-century composers and musicians that Eric
mentioned

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in his article, as well as Hafız Post’s famous student Itri. Yahya Kemal felt that poetry was like music, and he himself clearly loved the classical Turkish music as well. Since Yahya Kemal is a Rumeli Turk from Skopje, it is most fitting to cite his poem here, which I have translated from Turkish. The Old Music Many people cannot understand our old music. Thus they understand nothing of us nor anything. The soul’s horizons open with golden keys, At once sound and light begin to stream, The great Itri gives voice, in dance the soul veils, Then undulates with melody of Seyyid Nuh, In that fortunate time of Itri and his closest friend Luminous lacework Melody-maker Hafiz Post . . . This generation was ingenious, their brilliant work Showed the nation how to live in music. This summer if you listen to a violin at Kanlıca, Listen to a lute on a summer’s night at C¸amlica. In every saz from every string you hear the motherland Bewitching winds blow evermore across this land. This old generation reveals an honored world, In hearing more refined until their decline. One hundred and fifty years, a chain of peaks one by one rise up And in the end the Master’s glorious time arrives. This music shone with his last strength and stride; When he died, a majestic sun set across the countryside. Yahya Kemal To bring the music up to date, I must mention the weekly Saturday singing at the Rumeli migrant center in Fındıkzade today. There are also two practices a week, on Monday and Thursday evenings, for the musical chorus that presents regular concerts. On Saturday the center fills up, beginning around three in the afternoon, and both sections of the main room are tight with chairs for

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around 140 people. One week it is all Rumeli songs, the next week all classical Turkish music, although some Saturdays they sing a combination. The Saturday I describe here was all classical Turkish music. The music director stands at the vortex, surrounded by his musicians – several string players, a drummer, a clarinetist – and the music begins. Many of the people are middle-aged and older, although there are younger people who come, too. On one side by the windows sit people who will sing, karaoke style, later in the afternoon. They have prepared for this. With the classical Turkish music, an experienced singer comes to the microphone to lead the song, and then everyone joins the refrain, or sometimes the song, too. The person at the microphone sings numerous verses of a song. People get involved in the songs and the refrains until the center rocks and the musicians play with all their power.

Figure 17 sing

Musicians playing at the dernek on Saturday afternoon as people

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After about an hour and a half, there is a break for tea. People pass around Turkish tea on a tray in small glasses. The musicians need a break. Then the second half begins. Now is the time of various soloists. Some have come who are well-known and are sitting among the general public. They are begged to sing. They have wonderful voices and know classical Turkish songs well. Then the local soloists who have been sitting by the window get their chance. They step up to the microphone, encouraged by the audience. They, too, sing classical Turkish songs. People help them out if a line is soft or if they seem to need help. They are rousingly applauded at the end. It takes courage to do this in front of people. They sit down with pride at the end. Then there is more group singing and some people start to dance in slow formal ways in front to the music. By the end there have been 30 songs in the second half alone. The afternoon turns into evening. It has been a time for Rumeli people to be themselves with pleasure. As people are putting on their coats and saying goodbye, I happen to walk out with an older man. We talk as we walk down the street toward the tramway. I ask him about himself. He says that he was born in Istanbul, but his wife is from Salonika. I ask about the singing of Rumeli songs. Every other week, he says, so next week. I tell him I like these a lot, too. As we come along by the tramway, he explains further, “This is ruhun gıdası, ‘food for the soul.’” Truly it feels that way to me, too.

Ilhami Bey and Those Who Stayed Behind In the Turkish Bazaar in Skopje, very close to where the associationsponsored trip to the Balkans had featured dinner and singing late into the night, several years later I met with Ilhami Emin, a Turkish writer and journalist who himself had not emigrated to Turkey. It was 2011 and I was doing research in Skopje to try to understand those who had stayed and why they had remained. Staying had not been easy in the 1950s when so many of the Turkish community had left for Turkey. The 1970s were different, though. They were a time when conditions in Yugoslavia were at their best for minority Muslims. The Constitution of 1974 gave minorities more rights. The economy, while not particularly well organized, still functioned, since many people were working in Germany and sending back remittances. Some of the emigrants to Turkey even wondered if

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they should have tried to tough it out when they saw how well people in Yugoslavia were doing. This would change for the worse with Tito’s death in 1980, the subsequent decline in the economy across Europe, and the growing nationalisms in Yugoslavia in the 1980s. As for the Muslims who had remained in Skopje, I wanted to understand how their lives had fared. Obviously many Muslims had not had a choice. People who had been in prison had to leave. Others who could see there would be no work for them under communism left. For example, Refik Bey, whom I interviewed while on the trip to the Balkans, explained that after World War II, whenever he sought work, people asked his name. He gave it and they said they would call back, but they never did. All the good jobs went to the Slavic Macedonians, so he emigrated on the 22nd day of the 11th month of 1955. People often remembered the exact day.14 Still others who could see that their Muslim practices would be constantly denigrated also felt pressured to leave. But that still left some people who had some choice. As Ilhami Emin was a writer who had written on emigration of Muslims to Turkey, I read his work first before we met. He wrote that there needed to be more research on the migration wave in 1953–65 to Turkey from the Balkans.15 In his writings he described his own situation in the early 1950s as a teacher at the Tefeyyu¨z School in Skopje, the premier Turkish school. There was a well-known upper level teacher at Tefeyyu¨z who was also a writer, and who as he was leaving for Turkey had said to Ilhami Bey, “I will never make you set foot in Turkey,” implying his respect for each making his own choice. Ilhami Bey said he went home that day and sobbed. To those who stayed, those who left seemed as if they were betraying their Turkishness.16 Recall that the Turks were a minority, so each one who left weakened the Turkish community in Skopje and in Macedonia overall. And yet, at the same time those who stayed understood the reasons for leaving and did not want to judge their friends harshly. I met with Ilhami Emin in Skopje in 2011 for an extended interview that began with cafe macchiato for us both and the Turkish dessert kazan dibi for me. When this went well, we had a full meal together in the Turkish
ars c ¸iye with talk that went on for hours. Ilhami Emin was born in Radovis¸ in eastern Macedonia in 1931. But he did not begin with that. Rather, he told me about his grandfather

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who had been a Melami Sufi sheykh. The Melami have an unusual history among the Sufis. In a sense they have been critics of other Sufi orders in that they do not practice usual Sufi forms of piety or wear special dress. In the late Ottoman Empire they had a resurgence in the Balkans. Ilhami Bey explained that it was Sheykh Seyyid Muhammad Nur ulArabi who first brought the Melami to Rumeli. At that time Strumica in what is now eastern Macedonia was the center for Sufi orders in Rumeli. When Sheykh Nur al-Arabi came to Strumica he was sent a hyacinth with 12 petals. “Do you know what this means?” he was asked. “Yes,” he responded. “It means there are already 12 different Sufi orders here and there is no room for the Melami. But what will happen is that all of you will become Melami,” said Sheykh Nur ul-Arabi. And that is what happened.17 It was around 1860. I asked Ilhami Bey about his hometown, Radovis¸. He explained that when he was growing up it was half Turkish, half Slavic Macedonian, but the surrounding villages were 80 percent Turkish. “They were Yo¨ru¨k. They spoke the most beautiful Turkish – better than that of Istanbul,” he insisted. The Yo¨ru¨k had come to Rumeli from Anatolia in the fifteenth century; they had been exiled there as punishment for earlier supporting mystical leader Sheykh Bedrettin, official of Musa, son of Bayezid I. But during World War II, Radovis¸, like U¨sku¨p, had been occupied by Bulgaria. So Ilhami Bey had first been taught in Bulgarian, and later in Serbian and Turkish and Macedonian. He finished the eighth grade and went on to the commercial school in Radovis¸. Then in 1947 he came to ¨ sku¨p and has been there ever since. U ¨ sku¨p and did not emigrate to Although Ilhami Bey stayed in U Turkey, still he knew about emigration in his hometown of Radovis¸. He said the difficulties started when the government wanted to make a collective of the land and the animals. And they wanted to have the women and the men work together on the cooperative – not separately, as was the Turkish custom for the sexes. The slogan for the communists was “brotherhood and unity.” This came to mean that all would eat from one pot, which meant for those doing the required military service, they would have to eat pig’s meat with the others. They were also afraid that the Bulgarians would come again as they had during World War II. I asked Ilhami Bey how it had been for the Turks as Muslims in Yugoslavia under communism. He said it had been hard until Alexandar

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Rankovic´ was expelled from power in 1966. “Then when the 1970s came, a time of liberalism, it was the best time. We could go anywhere except China or Albania.” Ilhami Bey had been Deputy Minister of Culture for Macedonia for eight years. He had also had a monthly literary journal, Sesler (“Sounds”), that was published for 40 years. Certainly Ilhami Bey had had a fulfilling life within socialist Macedonia. But how about his children? One daughter had moved permanently to Istanbul. A son had published his father’s memoirs (in 2011) but was currently out of work. What remaining in Macedonia often did for a minority people was to put off the question of emigration onto the next generation. So I asked Ilhami Bey directly. “Why did you not go to Turkey?” His answer, given in hindsight when he was 80 about a decision he had made when he was in his twenties, is still interesting. He explained the following “family drama,” to use his terms, that took place in the mid-1950s. My sister had recently married and moved to Bitola, another city in Macedonia. My mother’s only brother had gone to Turkey before World War II and she wanted to go to Turkey, too. Two other sisters went to Turkey, too. My father did not go. Nor did I, for I was married. My mother died in Turkey at age 60. I never saw her again. This is go¨
c – migration. It is separation. It must be endured. Then Ilhami Bey told me a story that his own mother had told him of a woman at the time of the Balkan Wars in 1912. “She was from our town,” he said, “that is, Radovis¸.” She had to flee. Her husband was killed. She had twin daughters. She had to carry them. She was heading for Salonika. But she could not carry both of them. So she left one daughter by a Christian village and went on. She told the other daughter to look for her sister some day. “How will I know her?” the daughter asked. “She will look like you,” her mother said. Much later the sister came back to Radovis¸. She used to come to our house on market days and look out the window at the Christian women who came from the nearby villages. By then she was in her fifties. Then one day she saw her. She had her come into

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the house and explained what had happened. The other woman did not say anything. Probably she was married with children. She did not want to know she was really a Turk. She just left. This is truly a story of migration. Both war and migration. The wife of Munir Bey and her husband, the son of Nazi Bey, in Radovis¸. And then they left to go to Turkey, on the train. As the train went past, the sister saw her sister again, one more time. Similar to Ilhami Bey is the trajectory of Fahri Kaya. Both are poets and journalists. Both worked for Birlik, the Turkish newspaper that was published for 60 years in Skopje. And both wrote for Sesler, the monthly Turkish literary journal that was published for 40 years in Skopje. Both have received prizes and awards for their contributions to Turkish culture and literature in Macedonia. Both decided against leaving Macedonia. They stayed and were successful throughout the socialist period in Macedonia. In question, though, is the period of the 1950s when so many Turks were leaving Macedonia. What made Fahri Kaya stay then? He taught for four years in a remote village in Macedonia, beginning when he was 16, just after World War II. Then he went to Belgrade University for four years. That was not an easy experience for a Turk at that time. He allows as much. It appears that the challenge of the early Tito period was a challenge he took up. Was it stubbornness? Could he see the need for Turkish writers then? Was it a question of timing? A good friend of Muhterem Hanım also stayed in Skopje. She comes each year to Istanbul to visit Muhterem Hanım. When I asked her why she stayed, she mentioned that her husband had just gotten into medical school in the early 1950s. That was rare for a minority Muslim student at the time. They did not want to lose that opportunity. He became a well-respected doctor in the broader community of Skopje. But now that she is a widow with her Muslim name on her identity card, she has to remind people that she is wife of such and such a doctor so that she will be treated with respect. A Muslim name is cause for concern among many Slavs in southern Skopje, where she has long lived. And then there is the case of Kemal Aruc
i, the father of Dr. Muhammed Aruc
i, whom I met in Istanbul at the Center for Islamic Research. Dr. Aruc
i told me about his father, who had not only resisted emigration from Macedonia but had also advised others against

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it. Kemal Aruc
i was an imam who was prohibited from practicing as an imam due to his stand against emigration to Turkey. Kemal Bey had said, according to his son, “We will not leave this land. We do not accept emigration.” The Aruc
i family is from Vrapc
is¸te, a smaller town outside Gostivar, west of Skopje, a town known for the number of Turks who live there. I asked Dr. Aruc
i if his father had issued a fetva, that is a Muslim religious edict, against emigration. “No,” he said, “not him, but his teacher, Abdu¨lfettah Rauf, did.” In it he likened emigration to kafirlik, to “infidelity,” or “being a non-Muslim.” Or as Dr. Aruc
i quoted more formally and almost poetically: To migrate to Turkey is not lawful Migration is non-Muslim. Dr. Aruc
i had a quatrain by his father’s teacher, Abdu¨lfettah Rauf, on the wall of his office. I went over and copied it. O zaman belki bu tatsız ve pu¨ru¨zlu¨ u¨sluˆb Ile yazdunsa bu ¸si’ri iradem meslub, Size bir hatıra, ¸sayet kalacaksa ne ¸seref! Ah, eg˘er bizlere mesken kalacaksa U¨sku¨b.

1390

Then maybe the tasteless and rough style With which this poem so written, yet my decree denied; For you a memory, if perchance it survive what honor! Ah, Skopje if for us a dwelling survive.

1971

But the life of Abdu¨lfettah Rauf was one of suffering from the communist regime. He had a medrese education and served as a leader of the Muslim community in Macedonia. But he was imprisoned after World War II in the early stages of the Tito regime and remained in prison until 1956. While in prison his health was broken. Still he continued to write poetry, which was sent to his student, Kemal Aruc
i. It was published after he died. After leaving prison he was forbidden to serve as an imam. Finally he was allowed to work in the archives and passed away in 1963 at the young age of 53.

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The music director at the Rumeli Dernek spoke with deep respect for Abdu¨lfettah Rauf, also known as Mu¨derris Fettah Effendi, who was a friend of his father’s. He told me it was important that Kemal Aruc
i publish his poetry. And then he told how one day Mu¨derris Fettah Effendi had walked past his father on a street in Skopje. A nearby Christian had remarked to the music director’s father, “That is the best Muslim I know.” Somewhat taken aback by the Christian’s comment, the music director’s father had asked him how he knew Mu¨derris Fettah Effendi. We were in jail together. He withstood all the torture. Then they made him dig his own grave. He had remarked, “First I must do abdest.18 I am a Muslim and we believe we must do this before we die.” Then his father recited the poem Mu¨derris Fettah Effendi had recited about closeness to God when preparing his own grave. He said it was good that Kemal Aruc
i published his poetry. But whether people emigrated to Turkey or stayed behind, they maintained their honor and their cultural values. And they ¨ sku¨p. maintained the love of their city, U As a footnote, Imam Kemal Aruc
i’s son, Dr. Muhammad Aruc
i, recently passed away in November 2013 from cancer at the young age of 57 in Istanbul. Although his father would not emigrate and leave Macedonia, there was nothing for his son in Macedonia. Dr. Muhammad Aruc
i had a remarkable education. He completed high school in Turkish in Gostivar in Macedonia and then studied in Gazi Husrevbeg Medrese in Sarajevo. He completed a degree in theology and philosophy at al-Azhar University in Cairo, followed by a higher degree at Cairo University in Islamic Philosophy. He received his doctorate in theology in Istanbul at Marmara University and his Docent qualification at Sarajevo. He was fluent in eight languages: Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Bulgarian, French, Macedonian, Ottoman, and Turkish. He taught at Istanbul University and was a highly respected Islamic scholar. Macedonia could not have appreciated his knowledge or the breadth of his mind. As he once said to me, “I like America because I like empires. What good are seven small countries instead of Yugoslavia?”

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Weathering the Storm: The 1980 Coup and Honored Guests Turkey is a dynamic country whose society has undergone much change in the last 50 years. Social scientists point to the three coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980 as landmarks in this period, and to the gradual social mobilization of politicized Islam in more recent times.19 An early change that occurred simultaneously with the arrival of the Rumeli emigrants was the internal migration of villagers from eastern and northern Anatolia to the cities. This is reflected in the change in birth rates in Turkey such that in the early 1960s the average number of children per woman was 6.05, whereas in 2010 it was 2.15.20 And yet as I visited Turkey over this period, what stood out to me was the mature age of the politicians and the sincere and broad respect for the military. It truly was a respected career route for multiple segments of society. As for the Rumeli emigrants, the Turkish economy was a basic issue for them throughout this time. They arrived with craft skills but almost exclusively without capital. That is why some went to West Germany when jobs were available in the 1960s. But they also arrived with organizational skills. They had been members of the esnaf, the guilds, in Skopje. And they had pulled together as a minority community since World War I. The Turkish economy grew in the 1950s under the administration of the newly opened Democratic Party with Adnan Menderes as prime minister. Agricultural land was increased and modernized, the road system was expanded, and there were significant advances in the industrial base.21 But at the same time it was sustained by deficit financing and reliance on foreign aid, and so led to inflation and later to devaluation. The eventual economic crisis encouraged political opposition and strengthened those in the military who had been against Menderes for his policies in support of Islamic institutions that the military saw as counter to Atatu¨rk’s secularism. Menderes himself had feared a military coup since the Iraqi monarchy had been overthrown by a coup in 1958.22 The coup took place in May 1960 when the military arrested Menderes and other top Democratic Party leaders. In each of the coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980, the military took over the Turkish government and ruled for a time, but then turned the government back to parliamentary rule with the politicians chastised.

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The main new civilian politician in the 1960s who took over after the coup was Su¨leyman Demirel, an engineer who was born in 1924 near the city of I˙sparta and whose parents had come earlier from Bulgaria. Su¨leyman Demirel was a member of the Justice Party, and under him the economy grew again. Another new civilian politician of the 1960s was Bu¨lent Ecevit, an intellectual who was very different from Demirel in affect and in focus. Where Demirel was interested in roads and electricity, Ecevit was interested in creating a fairer society in Turkey.23 Ecevit worked to make strikes legal for the first time in Turkey. Unfortunately, also in the 1960s, there was polarization of leftists and rightists. This led eventually to another coup when the military took over again in March 1971. Demirel, who had been prime minister at this time, stepped down, and a technocratic group was put in power to carry out reforms, but without much real support. What had led to the coup was increasing public violence between leftist and rightist groups that Demirel could not control. Recall the student demonstrations in Western Europe of the late 1960s. But the ensuing takeover by the military, followed by martial law for the next two years, led to oppression largely of leftist groups, with rightist groups left alone. The only politician who did not go along with this was Ecevit, who was elected in the next election. Ecevit had just come to power when the Cyprus crisis broke in 1974. He became more popular in Turkey through this. But throughout the 1970s, Turkey had a series of coalition governments, none of which could deal effectively with the economic problems. The oil crisis of 1973 – 4 and the later one at the end of the decade were extremely detrimental to Turkey’s vulnerable oil-dependent economy and fed inflation that grew as high at 70 percent by the end of the decade. Also problematic was the system of higher education in Turkey in the 1970s. It was only available to 20 percent of those who graduated from high school.24 For a rapidly growing population and a rapidly changing society like Turkey’s, this was a true bottleneck. The growing numbers of young people without hope of higher education only made the political violence worse. And political violence escalated. For example, in 1977 around 230 people were killed in political violence. In 1979, the number had risen to

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between 1,200 to 1,500 people killed.25 Many of these people were killed in Istanbul. When the military took over yet again in 1980, they dissolved parliament and all political parties. It was as if there had been a low scale civil war brewing throughout the 1970s.26 All mayors and municipal councils were dismissed. Any politicians who had been active before 1980 were banned from politics for ten years. There were thousands of arrests – of trade unionists, leftists, teachers, academics, and journalists (most of whom had expressed leftist ideas), along with rightists as well. Almost all voluntary societies were closed. And yet, in this toxic environment, the “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association” not only stayed open, but was even allowed to keep the word “Turks” in its official name when all other immigrant associations had to remove it. How was this possible? To try to understand the relationship of the “Rumeli Turks Dernek” to the Turkish government, I considered their bylaws, their bulletins, and the testimony of their members. First, the bylaws of the association from their earliest days had insisted on absolute separation of party politics from the association. Secondly, I searched their bulletins for any mention of Turkish politics. There is one brief political reference in the March 1966 bulletin, wishing Cevdet Sunay, the new president, success. Apart from this there are no other comments related to Turkish politics or politicians except in 1978, where there is a short thanks to Ecevit for his visit to Yugoslavia. In this case the Rumeli Association had been lobbying for retirement transfers or pension rights for its older members who had paid into the retirement system for years in Yugoslavia. Apparently Ecevit brought this up during his visit to Yugoslavia. So it is an issue restricted to the emigrants themselves and important to them in the declining economic situation of Turkey. Since these bulletins – wisely, it appears – essentially do not refer to Turkey’s politics and cease publication around the time of coups, I asked people directly about the relationship of the association with politics. Notably, I asked older members who had known the association during times of political polarization in Turkey. An older member explained to me that when a candidate for political office would call to ask to talk to the dernek, the dernek would call the Emniyet, that is, the State Security, and they would send two

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plainclothes men to be there at the same time to have tea and listen. So there would never be a politician or political candidate present at the migrant center without full knowledge of the State Security Office. This sounded well thought out. But it did not affect me so much until one day a politician did come to talk to people at the migrant center. After the politician left, I noticed two men leaving from behind what had been a closed door. Indeed they let the Security know. Another precaution the migrant association takes is that when foreign guests come, they tape record all discussion from another room. I wondered if my talk had been recorded. I doubted it, though. I came so frequently and I spoke Turkish. Somehow I think they meant important foreign guests. Further, I was told that the dernek should not support any mezhep. I asked what that implied. I knew what a mezhep was – an Islamic legal school of which there are four main ones. But when I asked further, I was told that this implied that it should not support any tarikat, that is, any Sufi group, considered by some to be later mezheps. Then I was told an anecdote that related to the dernek’s relationship with the Turkish government. The dernek had held a symposium on the 650th anniversary of the Turks going to Rumeli. They had asked Ankara for funds for this from the Tourism Bureau and had received 100,000 Turkish Lira. They kept careful files of their expenses for the symposium but spent only 75,000 TL. So they sent back 25,000 TL. The Tourism Bureau said this was the first time this had ever happened. They sent them a special thanks. I remarked, “Such honesty.” The man telling me this nodded. He then concluded, “This is why they did not close the dernek [in the 1980s].” I then asked why this dernek was different from other derneks. All the other immigrant derneks that I knew of had been closed in the crisis of 1980. The response I received from many members was, “We don’t get into politics.” This was followed by the explanation, “They knew we were not into politics, just social help.” I elaborated that at other derneks, “mostly men play cards.” I had observed this. But at the Rumeli Turks Dernek I had not seen card playing.

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We don’t play cards here. It leads to disputes. And that leads to politics. We used to play cards here, but then we forbade it. Cards lead to arguments which lead to politics. I found that an intriguing order of argument. The gentleman who was making the argument continued: A dernek should be a place of peacefulness, of shared conversation. A place of peacefulness and freedom from anxiety. With cards, when people come in, some sit at one table, some at another, it leads to disputes. Then he stood up and went upstairs. To make sure, I watched on and off all day, for I stayed at the dernek working in the basement. Men came in and read newspapers and played backgammon. But no cards.27 Several years later, on a return trip to Istanbul and the dernek, I asked again how the Rumeli Turks Dernek kept safe from political problems in the 1980 coup. An especially dependable and knowledgeable source told me that the dernek had been careful not to accept politicians as members. Rather, they took business people, craftsmen and guild members, and lawyers. Notice, however, they were not against a respected guild member running for public civic office later. One of their presidents had become mayor of Zeytinburnu. But someone whose main work was political was not among them. Another respected person in the community explained to me that their experience with communism in Macedonia had worked toward their depoliticization. They were anti-communist, they were nationalist, but not party-centered from this experience. At most the dernek was always with the central party, not leftist or rightest, and always they would stay away from violence. They had lost both their state and their country. So it was in their genetic code.28 Interestingly, one of the leaders of the 1980 coup was General Kenan Evren. He became President of Turkey officially from 1982 to 1989. As I was reading his short official biography I learned he was born in 1917 in Alas¸ehir, near Manisa, in western Turkey. Immediately this made me wonder. Both Alas¸ehir and Manisa are very close to Izmir and were places where many people from the Balkans had settled. As I read more about

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Evren’s family, finally in a Turkish article a local man noted that Pasha Kenan was Selanikli, that his parents had come from Salonika. I am not suggesting that the Rumeli Dernek was favored because Evren was from Rumeli. Note that other derneks from the Balkans were closed at this time. Rather I am pointing out how high a Rumeli man rose in the military. In 1990, however, on the 40th anniversary of the Rumeli Dernek, two important guests were invited to the celebration and they both honored the dernek with their presence – Su¨leyman Demirel and General Kenan Evren. What an unusual pairing! Recall that General Evren had barred all politicians, including Demirel, from politics for ten years, although that was rescinded at a somewhat later date. However, in 1990, General Evren had retired, and Demirel was temporarily out of power. The Rumeli Dernek was probably one of the few organizations that could bring these two men together for what they both had in common – namely, their common Rumeli background. In the 1990s, when the dernek began to publish bulletins again, in the second bulletin there is a thanks to “respected” Kenan Evren (note omission of his military title) and a photograph of him with the Executive Council at Evren’s retirement home in Marmaris. There is also a letter of thanks from General Evren (with his military title) to the dernek for the 40th anniversary celebration. As for Demirel, he would go on to become prime minister again in 1991, and President of Turkey again from 1993 to 2000. His attendance at the 40th anniversary of the Rumeli Turks Dernek in 1990 can be seen to prefigure the increasingly active role of Turkey in the Balkans in the 1990s and the twenty-first century. His presence – when he was out of power – at their commemoration was a great honor for the Rumeli Turks Dernek.

CHAPTER 7 THE RUMELI TURKS ASSOCIATION REACHES OUT

In the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, the “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association” matured, reaching out to the broader Turkish community. Women began to take a more active public role in activities of the association, the youth group was energized, and the association looked back to its Balkan homeland in meaningful ways. Meanwhile it grew organizationally at its base. It reached out with its charity work across Istanbul and with scholarships to students in need across Turkey and overseas. Poetry had always been important to its members and it continued its conferences on Rumeli poets, especially the poet of U¨sku¨p and Istanbul, Yahya Kemal.

Enter the Women and Outreach Expands The 1990s were a time of change in the Rumeli Turks Dernek, not least of which was the public entry of women members. Women had been there in the background, preparing food and helping, but not officially or publically. Today it is hard to imagine the dernek without women’s contributions. Thursday is women’s day at the dernek center. The women’s commission meets that day and holds its activities then. At social events in the Balkans and in Turkey, men and women often gather or end up interacting separately. So it is practical to have a separate day for women. This way

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men come to the dernek center other days knowing that women will not be gathering then. This is not total separation, merely clear expectation. Men and women interact well. So, for example, the office staff are female and the building staff are male. They are always in attendance, and everyone is comfortable in their presence. Yet for the first decades of the Rumeli Turks Dernek, there had been no women’s branch. Why was this so? First, the organizations that the dernek was modeled on did not have women’s branches, either. Secondly, although mothers are highly respected, these mothers had no time. There were not many labor saving devices and there was much work in the home, what with mothers-inlaw, children, and work. Some of the first generation of immigrant women also worked outside the home. Thirdly, the question of public space for women in Turkey remains problematic. Atatu¨rk spoke out for equal rights for women in education and politics. Women won the right to vote in municipal elections in Turkey in 1930, and the right to vote in general elections in 1934 through a constitutional amendment, but they still have been largely absent from political power. In the labor force, women in Turkey have even declined from several decades ago,1 although education is thoroughly coeducational. Perhaps women’s available time was enhanced by the gradual increase in wealth in the emigrant community over time, as well as by the increase in labor saving devices. By the 1990s, some women did have more time. In any case, in 1993 a women’s branch of the Rumeli Turks Dernek was founded. The first president was Tu¨lay Aras, the wife of a man who had recently been president of the dernek from 1989 to 1991. Undoubtedly she had heard much about the organization in the years of her husband’s presidency and knew she and other women could contribute. There are accounts of women contributing to the dernek in earlier years. A woman told me that she had been especially active in 1976 with one of the clothing drives. No doubt women had helped their husbands, especially with charitable activities, and with the meals the second day of Muslim holidays. But there had been no women’s organization as part of the dernek. There were few models of women’s associations in Turkey then. There had been a women’s organization in Turkey at the time of the War of Independence, the famous Anadolu Kadınları Mu¨dafaa-i Vatan

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Cemiyeti (“Society of Anatolia Women to Defend the Homeland”), which was founded in 1919, long before most of the Rumeli emigrants had come to Turkey. After that there had been a period with few women’s organizations. Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, there had been the political “Association of Progressive Women.” Women’s associations would not become common in Turkey until the 1990s and 2000s. In this sense the Rumeli group was in tune with the times. The Rumeli bulletin, now renamed “The Voice of Rumeli,” had articles on the activities of the Rumeli women’s branch for the first time in 1993.2 Besides working with students, this included visiting individual homes of families that needed food and other essentials. They also made a plea for more women to join the women’s branch. A much fuller article on the women’s commission – note it is now a “commission,” not a “branch” – came out the following year.3 It was written by the president of the women’s group. The first year they had had a limited budget, and so had just worked with needy students and given nutritional help during Ramadan. The second year their main focus was on giving to a Foundation for Turkish Veterans and responding to the needs of families they were already working with. But the third year, the women’s commission began some new initiatives. The first was to help a young girl who needed special heart surgery. This led to donations of internal wiring for the Neurosurgery Intensive Care Unit of Haseki Hospital and a donation for air conditioning and curtains in five intensive care units. In addition, the women’s commission made specific donations to the Yedikule Respiratory Hospital so that a family member could stay and assist next to the patient’s room. In recognition, the following year the Rumeli Women’s Commission was invited to Ankara, where they were received by the President of Turkey, Su¨leyman Demirel, who presented the president of the women’s commission with a plaque of honor. Each year the women’s commission went on a mosque trip during Ramadan to a different city or district. And each year the women’s commission also put on a kermes, a bazaar-type auction, where they sold the sewing they had done for the dernek, which supported their activities for the year. What is interesting to me is what is not written in these accounts. What was happening was the women were taking over major aspects of the main social charities of the dernek because they could do them better

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than the men. It was not that the men were not good at them. It was that the women had access to families that the men did not have. Let us look first at food assistance over the years as a major social charity of the Rumeli Dernek and see how it changed when the women became an organized part of the dernek. From the start providing food or “sustenance” was basic. The earliest bylaws list it under the first item in “Assistance to those in Need.” It is spelled out in the first bulletin in 1962 with the food aid from America as “half a kilo of cooking oil, powdered milk, beans, and flour given to each of our townsmen in need.” By 1966 the bulletin specifies the particular food groups and notes that it will be given to 150 families in seven districts of Istanbul. In the bulletin for 1970, 300 families received food assistance that year from the dernek, so the number of families was increasing over time. However, in 1974, food aid was given to 300 families again, but at Ramadan. In the past this was not necessarily linked to Ramadan, when there are others often giving to the poor.

Figure 18 Women’s group in dernek with Muala Hanım, head of women’s group, and Suna Hanım of dernek staff

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In contrast, in the bulletin for 1994, 80 families received monthly sustenance,4 while in 1995, 85 needy families received food each month.5 In 1996, 137 families received monthly dry food, soap, olives, cheese, meat, and funds for meat, as well as two tons of coal for the winter.6 Then in 1997, 250 families received monthly food packets, as well as transportation funds. The main change is the monthly nature of the food distribution. The women became an organized group within the Rumeli Dernek beginning in 1993. In their first year they began visiting needy families. Before it looked as if the food was given out when it was available from overseas aid groups or from the city municipality annually. Now families in need received it every month; need determined distribution and the supply was from the dernek. Also the dernek had more resources and better organization. With the women on board they could visit families and monitor need much better. I went on one of these all-day monthly monitoring trips to meet families who were receiving aid and to evaluate how they were doing. As would be expected, the families were very different and Mualla Erıs¸, the president of the women’s commission, who was leading the group, was careful to preserve people’s dignity. There were psychological aspects to the monitoring, and different women were able to relate to families in different ways as informal social workers. Similarly, the program for giving new clothing to poor children at Ramadan has been a major social charity of the dernek since its inception. The general Muslim custom is that all children should have a new set of clothing at Ramadan. In the community this actually developed from the early bylaws that they would provide clothing for children going to school. In an early bulletin they noted that they had indeed purchased full sets of new clothing for 131 children. By 1966 it was for 216 poor immigrant children. The numbers of poor children of Balkan origin provided with new clothing at Ramadan by the Rumeli Dernek continued to climb. In the 1970s, the lists of numbers of children given new clothing at Ramadan were also broken down by city of origin. So in 1970 we know that of the 542 children who received new clothing, almost half were from cities in Macedonia, with other immigrant children who received new clothing coming from cities in the Sancak, Kosova, and Bosnia. In addition, there were 18 children from cities in

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Turkey who received new clothing. That is, they were not of Balkan origin (3 percent). The next year, in 1971, the dernek gave new clothing to 888 children at Ramadan, and again the largest group came from Macedonia. But there were also 40 children who were from Turkey, not of Balkan origin (4.5 percent). In 1973 the numbers went down to 449 children and in 1974 down to 400 children given new clothing at Ramadan. In 1975, the number went back up and the dernek clothed 774 children. Most were of Balkan origin, with the majority from Macedonia, but again there were 20 children who were from Turkey, not of Balkan origin (3 percent) And in 1978 the dernek provided new clothing to 687 children, most of whom again were of Macedonian origin. But this year there were 83 children who were Turks from Turkey, not of Balkan background (12 percent). Giving new clothing at Ramadan to increasing numbers of children of non-Balkan origin is noteworthy. I include this in the section on women because I understand this as coming from Balkan immigrant women encouraging their Turkish neighbors to come and bring their children to the Rumeli Dernek for new clothes, too. As a Rumeli woman said to me in 2007 when I asked why they gave to children who were almost entirely of non-Balkan background, “When people are in need, you do not ask where they are from.” This is especially significant for an immigrant organization. I have worked with many immigrant organizations in America. To go beyond the needs of the group is rare. The numbers of children of non-Balkan origin receiving new clothing at Ramadan increased until the dernek no longer noted the origin of the children. The last time I could find data for numbers of children of Balkan and non-Balkan origin was in 2000. That year the dernek gave new clothing to 1,575 children. Of these 1,575 children, 545 were of Balkan or Rumeli origin, while 1,030 were not (65 percent). Notice the change from 1978, when 12 percent of the children were of non-Balkan origin, to 2000, when 65 percent were of non-Balkan origin. Since 2000 they do not even tabulate, for almost all are of non-Balkan background. I want to emphasize how unusual this is for an immigrant organization. The dernek had moved out to helping the children of the urban poor in Istanbul. The numbers of children receiving new clothing from the dernek at Ramadan continued to increase though the 1980s. By 1990, they were giving new clothing to over 2,000 children each Ramadan.

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Figure 19 Dernek women putting out new clothing for poor children during Ramadan

I wonder if the increasing numbers were an impetus for the women to become more directly involved. It is not clear how it was organized in the 1970s and 1980s, but as the numbers grew, more organization was clearly needed. Again, it is socially acceptable for women to go into homes to see if there is economic need, while this is not appropriate for men unless there are other men present. By the time I worked with the Ramadan Clothing Project of the Rumeli Dernek in 2008, it was almost totally directed and administered by women. There were six main poorer municipalities within Istanbul whose children could qualify for the program. The main criterion was need, not country of origin. The families registered and people checked to see that they indeed were in need. Families listed the children and their ages. The Rumeli women sewed for four months, sold what they made at the kermes, or auction, and with the proceeds purchased the new clothing wholesale. The stocks of clothing and shoes were then carefully positioned in a large hall so a child with a parent could go in, follow a pathway, and get sized for all his or her clothing along the way, with shoes at the

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end. Children with their mothers from different municipalities came on different days at different times so the crowds would not be too big on the same day. All of this was set up in a wedding salon across the street from the dernek center. People kept records from the previous year, so they just added a year to the age of children from the year before for families that still qualified. In 1995, there were 3,500 poor children who were given full sets of new clothing. In 1996, it was 4,500 children and some older people as well. In 1997, it was 3,000 children who were outfitted from head to toe. The clothing included full outfits along with coats and shoes. I worked with socks because they were the easiest to size. I should add it is not easy to work during Ramadan when everyone is fasting, for you must spend many hours without eating or drinking, trying to get clothing right for hundreds of children. But it is so good to see their faces and their smiles. In these ways the women’s commission has contributed centrally to the major charitable work of the dernek. But this is not their only work. The women’s group also organizes trips for its members. Some of the women are widows. They could not readily travel were it not for the trips sponsored by the women’s commission. Like the trip to the ski resort that I went on, a bus trip with all women is socially acceptable and a lot of fun. The women’s group has taken trips internationally as well. They went to Dubai, to Cairo, to Italy, to Spain, and to Cyprus in different years. On Thursdays when the women gather for meetings, they all have lunch together at the dernek in the main room. Of course there is tea afterwards and much talk and pleasure. As one woman told me, “It is much better than counseling.” There are also classes, including embroidery and wood-painting classes. Hidayet Ilimsever is a master seamstress and artist. Her classes in Turkish embroidery have been remarkable. The women gather to sew together to prepare items to sell for the auction. This is a perfect time to learn new skills. Rumeli culture fosters a home made beautiful by exquisite handcrafts. In the past young girls would have spent years preparing their doweries of embroidered tablecloths, towels, scarves, pillows, and hand-sewn silken garments. People continue to appreciate the artistic skill and beauty of such handwork. I was taught shadow stitch, China needle, wrapping stitch, and the challenging Turkish work. I also found that while concentrating over the

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embroidery hoop, I learned much from the other women of their lives. ¨ sku¨p One day I asked women what they dreamed of. “Our homes in U and the gardens.” There followed descriptions of staircases, fruit trees, corner places to gather. I should have expected it. One woman said, “I have lived in several apartments in Istanbul, but I only dream of my ¨ sku¨p.” home in U Another day a woman told me of her grandmother, who could not go to sleep unless she had her clothes laid out at the foot of her bed. “Why?” I asked her. Every generation has had to flee in the night. That is three generations. She only feels secure if the clothing is there just in case. And another day they talked about what it was like to be a young bride and live in your mother-in-law’s house. Almost never did anyone acknowledge all the work they did. I wondered how they survived these years and thought that sewing may have been a refuge as well. Several times a year there are displays of the sewing work of women of the dernek. These are often held in the library, whose broad tables are transformed into a sea of undulating cloth with embroidered silken flowers – graceful carnations, slender tulips, and wreaths of roses. These flowers are the traditional ones of Turkish embroidery, and are sewn with silken threads: soft lavenders, gentle greens, shades of crimson, and golds of early dawn rising up across the glowing sheen of soft garments.

An Energized Dernek Reaches Back to the Balkans and Across Turkey In the 1990s it was as if there was a new energy in the Rumeli Dernek. They had a new location with more space and living space nearby for older members. In late 1989 they had moved again, this time to Fındıkzade, outside the trolley-line, beyond Haseki Hospital, where the women’s commission had contributed to the intensive care units. With each new center location came this renewal. In the 1990s there were new initiatives. The women’s commission in 1993 was followed by a youth commission the following year. There had been youth groups before, but this one was more active and, like the

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women’s group, has continued. In 1995 the Rumeli Vakfı was founded. It included members from other Rumeli derneks and looked to be a sort of inheritor of the earlier “Turkic Migrant and Refugee Organization,” but only with members from the Balkan region. A vakıf is an Islamic foundation or endowment that is established for a specific purpose. For example, the Rumeli Vakfı early on established a home for older people to live out their days. Then in 1998 the Rumeli Dernek established their first branch in Bayrampas¸a, followed by branches in other municipalities of Istanbul with many immigrants. All these are signs of an energized and expanding organization. A counterpoint to the organizational expansion of the Rumeli Dernek in Istanbul was the economic decline and political turmoil in the Balkans. This was no surprise to people of the dernek, who knew that since Tito’s death in 1980, the 1980s had been a decade of declining prosperity and growing nationalisms in Yugoslavia. And the 1990s were even worse. Fighting broke out in Bosnia in 1992. There are about 2 million people of Bosnian descent in Turkey, so the fighting in Bosnia put Turkey under pressure. Yet in 1992, Turkey was reluctant to take action alone. Turkey had originally been opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia, arguing that it would lead to murderous ethnic wars.7 Milosevic´, who was also against the breakup of former Yugoslavia but with Serbia in charge, visited Ankara for support in January 1992. But a month later, Turkey reversed itself, and instead recognized the independence of all the former Yugoslav republics. In April 1992, a Turkish official visited Belgrade and Sarajevo trying to build some sort of compromise, with no success. In June Turkey called the Islamic Conference Organization of 47 members to Istanbul to agree to provide resources for a UN force to be sent to the region if sanctions against Serbia failed for their military destruction of the Croatian city of Vukovar and their shelling of Sarajevo that had begun in April 1992. Thus Turkey agreed publicly to work through the UN, but not alone. The Bosnians in Turkey were not satisfied. They knew their families were being killed. They wanted arms sent to them. Subsequently we found out that both Iran and Turkey had found clandestine ways to send arms to Bosnia.8 At the same time, local Turkish groups sent aid to Bosnians. When it became known that Bosnian women were being raped, Turkish women sent beautiful hand-crocheted scarves to Bosnian

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women who were deemed s¸ehit, or “martyrs,” since they were raped because they were Muslim. Meanwhile in Kosova and in Macedonia the local Balkan Turks had tried to organize politically. In July 1990 the Turk Demokrat Party of Unity was founded in Kosova with Prizren as its center. However, Kosova was put under Serbian military occupation and martial law beginning in 1990. In such circumstances there was not much a minority political party could do. In June 1992 the Turkish Demokrat Party of Macedonia was founded. It invited eight derneks9 from Istanbul to visit the newly independent state of Macedonia for four days in June 1993. They had an audience with the Macedonian prime minister, Kiro Gligorov. They visited the Turkish newspaper in Skopje, Birlik, the Turkish television station, and the Macedonian Islamic Union. They also visited eight cities in Macedonia besides Skopje. The clear message was that the Turks in Macedonia were in a difficult economic and educational situation and were seeking help from their former countrymen who had emigrated to Turkey. Of these derneks, the Rumeli Turks was the oldest and best organized, so it is not surprising that they were asked for specific help. The Rumeli Dernek responded to a call for help from Skopje Muslims regarding assistance with restoring the Ko¨se Kadı Camii. This was a late seventeenth-century mosque in the Bazaar of Skopje. It had been closed by the Macedonian government in 1948 and subsequently used by them as a depot. It had also been damaged in the 1963 earthquake. In 1992 the esnaf, that is, the guilds of the Bazaar, and a dedicated group had begun work on renewing it. However, the Macedonian government had put obstacles in their way. The government’s idea had been to turn it into a teahouse. To counter this, ¨ sku¨p Muslims had brought a court case and had won, after which U they had gone back to trying to renew the mosque. But almost 50 years of misuse had left it in very poor condition.10 In response, the Executive Council of the Rumeli Dernek granted 40,000 DM [deutsche mark] in October 1995 to complete reconstruction of the Ko¨se Kadı Camii. The rapid response to the request from Skopje Muslims is not surprising. The president of the dernek at the time, Kenan S¸ahinler, who had been born in Skopje, had already begun an earlier project in 1991 to renew the Bolluca Mosque in Arnavutko¨y11 outside Istanbul.

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The Ottoman Ko¨se Kadı Camii in Skopje was reconstructed in record time. The rededication ceremony of the mosque was held in June 1996. Present were the Reis ul-Islam of Macedonia, the Mufti of Istanbul, the Mayor of Zeytinburnu, the Ambassador of Albania in Skopje, the President of the Rumeli Turks Dernek, and 40 members with Skopje roots. Medrese students recited ilahis in Turkish, Albanian, Macedonian, and Arabic. This project was highly successful in several ways. First and foremost, it responded to a need defined and requested by the local people. It was a cooperative venture and used local labor and materials, and so local people profited doubly. At the same time it brought together multiple concerns of the donating group, that is the Rumeli Turks Dernek in Istanbul – their concerns with Islam, with Ottoman heritage, and with their own Rumeli heritage. The Rumeli Turks Dernek was excited by this project and announced that their next project would be the Du¨kkancık Camii, a mosque almost totally destroyed in the 1963 earthquake and also in the Turkish Bazaar area of Skopje. Only the minaret and one wall remained standing. It was originally built in 1549. But permission to work on its reconstruction had not yet been received from the Macedonian government. This would be a much larger project. It would not be finished until 2007 by the Rumeli Vakfı. I visited this mosque in 2014 and it is quite handsome. Interestingly, the 1996 Ko¨se Kadi Camii project anticipated later important work in Macedonia by TIKA, the Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency. TIKA subsequently worked at restoring Ottoman mosques, bridges, and other monuments in Bosnia, Kosova, Albania, and Macedonia. In 2011 in Macedonia TIKA completed work begun in 2005 on the fifteenth-century Mustafa Pasha Mosque near the Kale, the Ottoman Fortress, in Skopje. Thus the Rumeli Turks Dernek had begun work on reconstructing mosques in Skopje ten years before TIKA. The same year that the Rumeli Turks Dernek was giving the financial aid to restore the Ko¨se Kadı Camii, it also contributed new clothing for 1,000 children in Skopje for Ramadan. This was distributed through the famous Tefeyyu¨z School in Skopje. They also made sure that clothing was sent to needy adults through el-Hilal, the Crescent Society in Skopje. They provided costumes and instruments to the Valandovo Folklore Dernek in southeast Macedonia so they could perform Turkish

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folklore. Furthermore, they provided scholarships for 30 students from Macedonia to Turkey with monthly living allowances. Back in Istanbul, in the spring of 1998 the Rumeli Dernek purchased the Orko Building that was next to its center. It has proved to be a wise purchase for several reasons. It was later rented to a grocery store that has provided valuable monthly rent to the dernek. At the time, though, the purchase was justified as a place to store food, clothing, and supplies for emigrants arriving from Kosova, who were becoming ever more numerous. By 1998 the situation in Kosova had become critical. Beginning in 1990, Albanian Kosovars had pursued a policy of nonviolence, despite much provocation from Serbian military rule. And yet no internationals had even acknowledged their plight at Dayton in 1995. And so it had gotten worse. Nonviolence was hard to maintain, and now there were skirmishes in Drenice in central Kosova and hundreds of thousands of Kosovars had left their homes in terror.12 The Rumeli Dernek held a panel alerting people to the situation in Kosova. The president of the dernek, Lu¨tfu¨ Tu¨rkhan, wrote a paper in March 1998 in which he described the situation in Kosova and called for Kosova not to become another Bosnia.13 That summer, in July 1998, the prime minister of Turkey, Mesut Yılmaz, invited the Rumeli Turks Dernek Board to accompany and help organize his trip to Macedonia. This was a distinct honor, as they were the only dernek so contacted. By 1999 events in Kosova were heading to war. There was the massacre in Rec ak in January. The NATO bombing began in March. Over 800,000 Kosovars were expelled from Kosova. The Rumeli Dernek sent eight truckloads of food and clothing to Kosovars in Macedonia and 11 truckloads of food, clothing, and blankets to Kosovars in the camp in Trakya. The new building proved crucial to organizing these supplies. In 1999 there was also need for help in Turkey. On 17 August 1999, there was an earthquake in Turkey whose epicenter was in Izmit at the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara. Over 17,000 people died, and half a million were made homeless. The dernek gave assistance there, too. While these major assistance projects were going on in the Balkans and in Turkey at the end of the 1990s, the other main change in the dernek was a major expansion of the scholarship program. Like the food assistance and the clothing program, early on the dernek had sought to

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assist children of members in educational programs in whatever way possible. The earliest activity of this sort was in 1964 when 318 school bags were given to children of members in schools in different areas of Istanbul. They were provided by members of the dernek who were also members of the Leatherworkers Guild. In 1966 there were four students who received higher education monthly stipends. And in 1968 there were seven students who received monthly stipends to attend university. Through the next decade of the 1970s monthly stipends to students in higher education did not increase greatly. By 1975, the scholarship committee noted they had only received 17 applications in the last 12 years, which they considered disappointing. What was beyond their control was the limited number of university places and the quality of schooling in the poorer sections of Istanbul, where many of the students lived. Turkey had a shortage of university places for its young people – it could only accommodate 20 percent of its university age qualified youth at this time. In addition there were political problems with the coups. Many of the young people from this time went into business careers. It was the next generation that moved more into higher education. In the 1990s the dernek expanded its scholarship program substantially. In 1996, the dernek bulletin listed scholarships for 20 children of soldier martyrs from the Turkish military, 30 scholarships for students from Macedonia to study in Turkish universities, and 78 other scholarships, for a total of 128 students receiving monthly stipends for study. The next year, in 1997, the dernek gave out 276 scholarships with monthly stipends for study. It is important to understand on what basis these scholarships were granted. First, the students had to be economically in need. Second, they had to be academically successful. Third, preference was given to students studying medicine, law, political science, or history. They had to fill out forms and submit them to the dernek, and then they had to interview at the dernek before a committee. On the basis of these criteria, the scholarships were allotted. In 2000, they gave out monthly stipends for 510 university scholarships: 160 to students from the Balkans (39 percent) and 350 to students from Turkey (61 percent). They also gave out ten scholarships to the Police Academy, ten to children of soldier martyrs for where they desired to study, and 20 to high school students.

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In the twenty-first century the numbers decreased at first. In 2004, there were 365 students who received monthly stipends, of whom 36 percent were of Rumeli origin. In 2005, there were 388 who received scholarships. The decrease in numbers relates to differential funds available each year from the Rumeli Dernek and corresponds to the Turkish economy. In 2008, the year I was present, there were 475 scholarships awarded. That year 174 (36 percent) went to university students from Balkan countries. But there were 49 scholarships awarded to students from other countries, as well. This shows an open-mindedness that is truly remarkable. The remaining 253 went to students from Turkey. That year there was an article in the dernek bulletin by a former ¨ mer Bo¨lu¨kbas¸ı.14 He had received a scholarscholarship awardee, O ship at a critical time in his education, and had then gone on to Istanbul Technical University and a career in a technical field. His question was how to repay the Rumeli Dernek. And he posed a question about the many others who had won scholarships in the past. His partial answer was to be active in the Youth Commission. He pointed to Dr. Muzaffer C¸avus¸og˘lu, who had received a scholarship in the past, had become a well-known cancer doctor, and later was president of the Rumeli Dernek. He hoped to encourage others to participate as well. In 2009 the number was up again with 588 scholarships awarded, of which 262 were for students from other countries, including Balkan countries but not restricted to them, while 326 went to students from Turkey. As to where in Turkey, one of the members on the interview committee wrote: “Whether a student is from Sivas, or Trabzon, or Gaziantep, or Edirne, is of no consequence to us. What matters first is economic need, and academic success.” This is important, for in Turkey itself there are prejudices against students from the east. The experience of the Rumeli emigrants first as a minority in Macedonia, and then as a poor migrant group in Turkey, had shown them aspects of the society that the more affluent might not be sensitive to. It freed them to be open to Turks from all regions. The scholarships of course depend on the ability of the members of the Rumeli Dernek to give, so some years they are not as numerous as others. But in 2014, when there was a downturn in Turkey’s economy and in the Turkish currency, still there were 390 scholarships awarded.

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Poems are for Pockets, for Walls, for Conferences, and for Souls The last time I was in Istanbul, in December 2012, I spent time at the dernek center talking mainly with older men. I came to realize how important it was to be with them and listen to them. I had spent much time with women before, and with middle-aged men. But this time I was staying on the European side of Istanbul and so could stay later and talk longer in the afternoons and get to know a different group of men. Several of the men were widowers and lived near the dernek center. It was convenient for them. They could stop by, have tea, and talk with people. On Saturdays there was always music and singing. On the walls were photographs of places in the Balkans that made them feel at home. There were bridges and mosques and towns that they had known in their youth. And on the far wall in the front room were images of three Rumeli Turks that all could relate to in different ways. Of the three images, the largest one by far, which hung in the middle and was framed in gold, was of Mustafa Kemal. He looks directly at the viewer, and to make it more intimate, he has written in his own Ottoman hand across the lower part of the photograph, expressing optimism in the future of the Turkish nation despite the dark days they were going through in 1918. He is in Ottoman military uniform with a dark kalpak on his head. This is from before he was known as Atatu¨rk. Mustafa Kemal was born in Salonika in 1881. His father was from near Dibre in Macedonia. He studied in Monastir and Istanbul, and served in the Ottoman Army from 1905 to 1918, during which time he led the defense of Gallipoli against the British. He went on to defeat the Greek invasion of Anatolia and to organize and lead the Turkish Republic from its inception in 1923 to his death in 1938.15 On the wall to his right is Mehmet Akif Ersoy, the writer of the Istiklal Mars¸ı, the “Independence March,” which was accepted as the Turkish national anthem in 1921. Mehmet Akıf’s is the smallest of the three images. He is wearing a suit and tie, and he also looks directly at the viewer. Mehmet Akıf was born in Istanbul in Fatih in the old city in 1873 and died in Istanbul in 1936. His father was an Albanian from Peje in Kosova. He studied veterinary science, but was more a poet and was deeply pious. In 1925 he left Turkey for Cairo

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because he was against the secularist policies of the new republic. He only returned to Istanbul when he was dying. On the wall on the left side is Yahya Kemal. He is the poet whose poems many at the dernek hold dear. He too is in suit and tie, and he looks directly at the viewer with his head tilted slightly to the left. ¨ sku¨p in 1884. His father was from a prominent He was born in U Ottoman family expelled from Nis¸ in what had become Serbia. He went ¨ sku¨p, Salonika, and briefly in Istanbul, but then spent to school in U 1903 to 1912 in Paris. It was there that he decided to become a poet and to rework Turkish divan, or classical poetry. He thought poetry to be like music and used musical terms to describe poetry. He served in parliament and as an ambassador for the new Turkish Republic. He died in 1959, famous throughout Turkey for his patriotism and his love of Istanbul. This modern Muslim Rumeli “trinity” speaks to people of the dernek in different ways. They are all Rumeli Turks. They, or in the case of Mehmet Akıf, his father, left the Balkans when the Ottomans were expelled from Rumeli. They weave multiple backgrounds from ¨ sku¨p, Monastir, Salonika, and Istanbul Macedonia and Kosova, Peje, U together in a remarkable way. And Turks from Turkey would recognize all three of them as important people, too, although they would not see them with as much subtlety as the Rumeli people do. As I was talking with some of the older men one day, Adil Bey, who was from Skopje, took out of his pocket two folded pieces of typed paper. They were poems, several by Yahya Kemal. There followed a discussion of the meaning of the last line of one of the poems, referring to the lale, “the tulip,” and the gu¨l, “the rose.” “What do these stand for?” asked Adil Bey. Another man said that they smell good. “But what do they represent?” He answered himself, I think because the tulip stands for elif, it is God. [The tulip is seen as tall and slender in Turkish art like the first letter in the Arabic alphabet which is the first letter of Allah for God.] And the other [here he refers to the rose which is often a symbol for the Prophet Muhammad in Islam] is Muhammad. To mediate, the singing master who was also present said he thought they stood for iman, for “faith.” He explained by way of the Qur’an, that

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the poem was about death and how we face death. “What do we have here? We have friends and a spouse and children. But then we have only our faith that will be with us.” Clearly, everyone knew the poem without recourse to it. To help out readers, here is the poem in question by Yahya Kemal, one of the poems that Adil Bey kept in his pocket. In Turkish it is called, “Rindlerin Aks¸amı.” This means “The Evening of the Rinds.” It is almost impossible to translate the first word of the title. My newer Redhouse Turkish– English dictionary (2000) translates rind as “someone who is free-living and unconventional, yet also moral.” A dictionary of another ilk, my Oxford Turkish– English Dictionary (1959) defines rind as “a jolly, unconventional and humorous man.” But Yahya Kemal wrote the poem earlier than these dictionaries and was comfortable in Ottoman Turkish. So I looked in my Ottoman dictionary, an earlier Redhouse dictionary (1890) from when Turkish was still written in Arabic letters. It translates rind in multiple ways as: “a wine bibber; a debauchee; an atheist or cunning knave; or a saint intoxicated with love for God.” From all this I translate rinds as “those with few ties,” meaning few social ties. The Evening of Those With Few Ties On the ebb of the evening that will not return, it is late; The last tide of my life – how it flows, let it go. Of return to this world, were it dreamed of, Such deception or solace we do not seek. In the void of blackness broad wings open out Yet behind no sun shines from the great gate That leads through to unending tranquil night. So in these last gardens, do as your spirit will, Be dissolute in love, or heartfelt in passion, Let the tulip bloom, or the fragrant rose. Yahya Kemal

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You can now see why the question Adil Bey posed was about the meaning of the tulip and the rose. Turks have a great advantage here in that their poetry and embroidery and tilework are full of tulips and roses. They can see the images more readily and that is why Adil Bey immediately mentioned the “elif,” the tall letter, like an “l” in English, that is the first letter in the name of God in Arabic. It is like the slender tulip in Turkish art. To be “dissolute in love” could be to do away with all ego and be like the moth flying into the flame for love of God. The second phrase, “heartfelt in passion,” could also have a spiritual meaning, especially coupled with the rose, which is a symbol for the Prophet Muhammad – again, doing away with self, so what is left is only love of the Majesty of Truth and His saints. But at the same time, both these phrases could also be of earthly love. The singing master had it right as well. The poem is about death and how we face it. Everyone must face death. With the wars in the twentieth century the Rumeli community had much experience with death. But what a forced migrant community also has, in addition to facing death, is much experience with loss. When they emigrated they lost their homes, their gardens and neighborhoods, their towns and cities, and the whole fabric of life that they and their families had grown up with. They had to adjust to an entirely new setting where people did not know them, where their skills may or may not have been useful, where their children had to go to schools and settings where their parents may not have been able to assist them. It was frightening and deeply disempowering. A fair number of the older people passed away soon after the move. And there were people like Atatu¨rk’s mother who never adjusted to life in Istanbul. She always missed her Salonika despite the remarkable position of her son. This is where someone like Yahya Kemal was so important. He too ¨ sku¨p. But he was a muhajir like them. He too had lost his home city of U was also a poet, and he chose to write about what he had lost and how it felt in ways that reached and made other Rumeli emigrants feel not so alone. In America we sometimes have trouble understanding the power of poetry. I think the movement against memorization robbed us of some of its appreciation. It is better to know poetry than just to read it. And poetry has more meaning when life is harder; it speaks more clearly then.

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Perhaps we can hear it better when the clutter is swept away. The contexts of our lives matter. And where we confront poetry matters, too. The school classroom with forced reading of written anthologies is perhaps the worst place. We move more readily to song in our society than poetry. I once did some research for NASA on a high security base16 and found that the staff were most proud of who came up with acronyms. They had a dictionary of what the acronyms stood for; no one could remember this, but they all knew who had invented them. It was a form of verbal play, one of the few areas in which they could play. Poetry is also a form verbal play, often in constrained circumstances on tragic events. NASA was constrained and did have tragedies, although they were forced to call them “incidents.” And they had moved into song – “Sons of Apollo” – but off the base. In contrast, in the Balkans and the Middle East poetry has been present in the social world wherever there were guests and death and love. I taught in a village school in Lebanon and when guests came to the village, there were always people including children who could improvise poetic chants of welcome. This was true as well in Albanian tekkes or Sufi centers. I recall when an esteemed guest came to the tekke from Turkey, even I had to write a poem for his arrival, and then poems went back and forth between the two religious leaders throughout the visit.17 With death, laments are often composed by women about the deceased, and then chanted at the graveside. The apt ones are remembered and become part of the repertoire of the region. Love is much broader. It can be love of a friend, or love of a woman or a man, love of a city or country, or love of one’s spiritual master and love of God. There is weekly chanting of poems of spiritual love among Sufis. I have heard Sufis in Macedonia chanting classic Ottoman love poems as zikr in ceremonies of remembrance. One thing a poem can do in a place where poetry is more common fare is that it can speak powerfully to loss. This is no small thing for people who have lost their homeland. To give an idea of how Yahya Kemal speaks to Rumeli people, his poem that is most often printed and hung on walls at the dernek is his poem on Skopje, or U¨sku¨p, as it was called when he lived there as a boy. Again, translation is an art, and again with the title, there is a problem.

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It is called in Turkish “Kaybolan S¸ehir,” which literally means “Disappearing City.” An excellent translator of Turkish poetry suggested it should be translated as “The Lost City.”18 I have chosen a multisyllabic word, more like the Turkish and call it “The Vanishing City.” I can only ask readers to believe that in Turkish it is much more moving than in English. And, of course, if you are from U¨sku¨p, the places named move your heart as well. It is the loss of this formerly great Ottoman city and the realm that is no more, juxtaposed with the loss of the poet’s mother when he was still young, and the loss of all who have lost the homes of their youth. Of course these are the losses of the Rumeli Turks. The Vanishing City19 U¨sku¨p is the realm of Yıldırım Beyazit Sultan His keepsake for Descendants of the Conquerors. It was our city with its turquoise domes; Only ours, in face and spirit we were one. U¨sku¨p on Shar mountain, like Bursa20 come again From innocent blood shed – a garden of tulips. Weapons hanging high of three glorious wars Would shine in tearful eyes on holiday morns. I had barely entered the dawning of my youth When we buried my mother one autumn in that earth. Isa Bey’s cemetery, first opened in the conquest, Its presence engraved like the next world in my dream. In the past, it was our central land, today tell me why ¨ sku¨p not ours? I felt this from deep within. Is U Til in my heart a vision formed, the vanishing city! By separation deeply mourned, in sadness of heart.

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Though separation endure, though many years pass by, We may not be in you, yet once again you are in us. Yahya Kemal Such poetry built connections with rhythm, and in Turkish with rhyme, and with images so that U¨sku¨p was powerfully remembered anew. It is a potent way of dealing with loss. In an article from 1994 on the Yu¨cel organization in the association bulletin Refik O¨zer21 quoted the above poem. Only he referred to it with a different title. He called it “Dog˘dug˘um S¸ehir,” that is, “The City of My Birth.” For someone from Rumeli, that is a better title than “The Vanishing City.” Poems from the Middle East in the past often did not have titles, but took the first phrase of the first line as a sort of title. I wonder if Yahya Kemal did not title his poem and someone else merely took one of the most memorable phrases from within the poem and gave it as the title. This works for people from Turkey. But for people from Rumeli, I like better Refik ¨ zer’s title, “The City of My Birth.” O Turks from Turkey who are not from Rumeli also like the poetry of Yahya Kemal. He wrote many poems on Istanbul from many vantage ¨ sku¨dar, Bebek, and the Su¨leymaniye, to points – C¸amlıca, Cihangir, U mention a few – and one of the most famous, “From Another Hill,” describes an unspecified place in Istanbul, which is a city of seven hills. To show how Yahya Kemal could love another city, here is one of his poems on Istanbul. From Another Hill22 I looked at you dear Istanbul from another hill! Never have I seen or traversed or loved such a place. Come share my heart’s throne as long as I live. Just to love a district of yours is worth a whole life. There are so many flourishing cities to see in the world. But it is you who create enchanting beauty. He who has lived the finest and longest dream in my eyes, Is he who lived long in you, died in you, and lies buried in you. Yahya Kemal

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And so it was not surprising that when the Rumeli Association decided to have a conference on the poetry of Yahya Kemal, it was a successful idea. It brought out Rumeli people and other diaspora Turks, as well as Turks from Turkey. They have done this multiple times. There have also been five Rumeli Poetry Banquets with people and poets from other Balkan lands, including Albania, West Trakya in northern Greece, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosova, Rumania, the Sancak, and Turkey. This is wise in that different generations and different associations can participate. It is a natural form of outreach and a good media event as well. The Rumeli Association held a conference on the poetry of Yahya Kemal in 1978. This would have been on the twentieth anniversary of his death. Then in 1998, on the 40th anniversary of the death of Yahya Kemal, the Rumeli Association held a Rumeli Poetry Banquet and poets from Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosova, Greece, and Rumania also took part. These public events are important for outreach. But closer to home are the poems on the walls of the dernek. Even closer are the poems in people’s pockets, or the ones they have memorized. Many of these are by Yahya Kemal, a fellow U¨sku¨plu¨, a fellow muhajir, someone who loved the old music, a Muslim of the lived ways who grew up with ilahis, a Rumeli Turk, and a patriotic Turk. He speaks to the souls of people who, like him, know much loss.

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In the late twentieth century the Rumeli Dernek had begun to speak out publically on the execution of the Yu¨cel leaders in 1948 in Skopje. The dernek also took over the Yu¨cel mevlid commemorations, which grew in the twenty-first century. The martyrdom of the young leaders, years ago in Skopje, was joined together with the loss that the migrants had suffered, and in the process it all became more real for younger generations. This came together in the funeral and mevlid of the last widow of a Yu¨cel martyr, Hacer Abla.

¨ zer Calls for Dignity for the Dead in Skopje Refik O ¨ zer wrote an article, In the first bulletin in the 1990s, Refik O “The Turkish Nationalist Action in Skopje: the Yu¨cel Organization Event.”1 He also wrote a companion article on the opposite page, a most idiosyncratic view of his life that focused on his years as a political prisoner in Macedonia. These articles set the stage for a deepening of the dernek in the 1990s and 2000s. But this could not have been accomplished had people not already had remarkable respect for Refik Bey, his life before he came to Turkey in 1958, and all he had done for the dernek and people there. ¨ sku¨p, where his father was an Refik Bey was born and grew up in U Islamic leader. He was born in 1919 and so went to school under Serbian rule. In this restricted environment for Muslims, Refik could not follow the path of his father. Rather, he trained and worked as a tailor while he studied at night school. He spent his twenties during

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World War II; he also became a member of the Yu¨cel organization and studied to become a teacher. He was arrested in 1947 in the first group, and tried and condemned to 20 years at hard labor in prison. With the reduction of sentences for political prisoners after 1950, he was able to leave prison after seven years. Thus he spent most of his thirties in prison. He emigrated to Turkey in 1958. In Istanbul he married in his forties, while he continued his devotion to his fellow Yu¨cel members and to the dernek. Refik Bey worked in a variety of offices and functions for the dernek, including president. He was best known for his support of the Yu¨cel mevlid every year, and for his work to try to get fellow immigrants from Macedonia pension funds that they had paid into the Yugoslav system. He went back and forth to Ankara trying to secure this funding. The fact that the prime minister of Turkey, Ecevit, brought this up on his 1978 trip to Yugoslavia suggests the level of Refik Bey’s persistence. It is a difficult legal question, however, and he was not successful. Somewhat related to this, he also worked to get Hacer Abla martyr’s widow’s benefits from Turkey. In this last effort he was successful. Refik Bey thought Hacer Abla deserved martyr’s widow’s benefits since her husband had died due to his support of Turkey and the Turkish community in Macedonia. Turkey had no legal obligation to pay these benefits. And yet Refik Bey managed to convince Turkish authorities of the moral right to pay these benefits to Hacer Abla. This summary does not begin to do justice to Refik Bey’s contributions. In many bulletins there are poems by him in memory of a person who had died, or in celebration of a new dernek building, or of poet Yahya Kemal. The image is of a person of thoughtful kindness and conscientiousness. ¨ zer’s first article in the early 1990s Rumeli Bulletin is an Refik O account of the Yu¨cel event from a personal point of view. Refik Bey was part of the Yu¨cel organization and had lived through the trial in the dock. He had been thinking about this for years in prison, and for the past decades in Turkey. ¨ sku¨p Refik Bey frames his article with a juxtaposition of Ottoman U as a center of justice, civilization, and commerce, and the black days of the German occupation of Skopje in 1941, when no one knew what would happen.

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It was in these bleak times that the nucleus of the Yu¨cel organization was founded by nationalist Turkish youth to protect the customs and traditions of our community. Our ears were turned to Ankara radio. What attitude would Turkey take? The earliest members of the organization took an oath to endure any sacrifice. He wrote of their passing around books by Namık Kemal and Ziya Go¨kalp, speeches by Atatu¨rk, and poetry of Yahya Kemal. In 1943 they made contact with the Turkish consulate. In 1945 they went to the Turkish embassy in Belgrade and the Turkish ambassador gave them the name “Yu¨cel” – “Lofty or Eminent.” They were inspired by Atatu¨rk. They opened training courses for Turkish teachers and sent the new teachers to schools in towns and villages. They published books in Turkish in the new alphabet. They brought out the first Turkish newspaper in the new alphabet in Macedonia and they founded the first Turkish radio station there. Refik continues with the fuller explanation of the context of arrests and the trial. In 1947 Yugoslavia wanted to ingratiate itself with Stalin, and to dominate and intimidate the Turks. So to extinguish Turkish nationalism they condemned members of the Yu¨cel group to the most brutal punishment and sent hundreds to work in the mines. The four death sentences were carried out within a month. Apparently this was done knowing that Yugoslavia would leave Kominform soon afterwards. The hearing began on 19 January 1948. What sort of hearing was this? To prepare to give out the news of the brutal sentences, they set up local meetings of the “National Front” in the neighborhoods. The besieged Turks were forced to go, for government officials went from house to house demanding they attend. At the end of the neighborhood meetings people were forced to contribute funds against ¨ zer wrote: their own people one by one. Refik O When it came the turn of one of my relatives, the relative stated, “I have no money.” But one of their accomplices whispered to the headman, “That man is a relative of Refik, who is on trial.” This was enough to blacklist my relative. My innocent relative died here in Istanbul. I remember him and rue his loss.

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Refik continued in his article: The first day of the hearing in court arrived and all seventeen of the first group were there. We all sat in a line. Behind us were seventeen soldiers with bayonets ready. Each one of us had a guard. Were we going to escape? Who will escape? Or did they suspect that we would disappear? In the room were only people the Party members had brought. From among those who had sold out we could hear only two sounds as we entered the room – “idam.” That is, “death sentence.” There was only a single answer – “insaf.” That is, “Justice!” Finally five days after the start of the hearing, on January 25, 1948, the final sentencing was announced. Four people were deprived of their civil and political rights with their property confiscated and condemned to death. Five people were condemned to 20-year sentences. At that time 20 years was equivalent to 80. One to 15 years, one to 13 years, three to 12 years, one to 10 years, and one to 8 years. None of us had an attorney. They had appointed each an attorney. But the attorneys did not know what to say in our defense. They were afraid if they got it wrong they would end up in prison. In reading the indictment and sentencing, they began with the death sentences. I was fifth in line, after the four who were sentenced to death. At that moment, many ideas flashed through my mind. I am sure that the same thoughts went through the minds of my friends. In a moment I too could hear the death sentence proclaimed. If not sentenced to death, what was my crime or our crimes? Had we killed anyone? No. No one had ever proposed such an idea. We had no program of that sort of work. We had no ill will against anyone. We had no enmity. We had not put anyone away. For centuries we had gotten along well with our neighbors. And then Refik skipped to Yugoslavia extricating itself from Kominform in October 1950, with the result that all political prisoners’ sentences were reduced to seven years. So Yugoslavia began to move toward the West. It built a relationship with Turkey and the Migration Agreement was approved.

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But however much it moved toward the West, it was still repressive. In a communist regime it was a great misfortune to enter prison. To be a political prisoner was the worst. Even up to the last day it was important. Why? Because in prison, if you died, they never gave your body to your family. Where you were buried, no one ever knew. This last point is most important. Refik would emphasize this in his life story as well. It mattered deeply what happened to a body after death. The last part of the article showed this even more clearly. Is a dead person dangerous after death? The answer of the regime was swift. The regime did not want heroes to live on. Refik then wrote that since Macedonia was now independent (since 1991), he had three requests to ask of its prime minister. – First, honor be restored to the four Yu¨cel members who were condemned to death: S¸uayb Aziz Ishak, Ali Abdurrahman Ali, Nazmi O¨mer Yakup, and Adem Ali Adem. – Second, permission be given for the bodies of the four above named who were executed by firing squad to be reburied in a traditional burial ceremony in the Muslim cemetery in Skopje. – Third, honor be restored to other members of Yu¨cel who were tried (falsely). In addition Refik had a request to ask of the Republic of Turkey as well. – That the Yu¨cel Martyrs be given space in the [Turkish] Encyclopedia. And that there be added information on the trial with the names of those of the first group with their sentences listed. Notice especially the second request to the prime minister of Macedonia – that the bodies be reburied in a traditional burial ceremony in a Muslim cemetery in Skopje. Refik was calling for human dignity for the dead. To reinforce this call for human dignity, Refik Bey wrote his second article in the 1994 Rumeli Bulletin. It is framed as a sort of sketch of self.2

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Next to his name at the outset of the article is a photograph of Refik Bey in glasses and suit at a desk with papers, calendar, and desk calculator. There are other shorter “self statements” in the same bulletin about leaders of the dernek, written in the genre of “career summaries.” But Refik Bey was 75 years old when he wrote his. I am sure it was not what those who asked him to write about himself had in mind. ¨ sku¨p and the Refik Bey begins, “In 1919 I came into this world in U birth certificate still exists.” But immediately he moves from the precision of year and city to the limbo of politics and country and questions of knowing. Who would stay in this unknown country and for how long? In the end where would he be – in his house, on the road, in the hospital, in the air, in the sea, who can know? From the beginning what would happen, what would we encounter? What sort of difficulties would we meet along the way, who could know? Do we know anything I wonder? Skopje had moved from Ottoman to Serbian rule in 1912, to Bulgarian rule in 1915, and back to Serbian rule again by the time of his birth. But in general this passage reminds readers that immigrants’ lives are unpredictable. No one comes into this world thinking they will be forced from their home and country and have to move to a new land and start all over again. Refik Bey then asks whether life’s experiences do lead us toward maturity. Are we able to consider the goal of humans in the face of evil deeds? He asserts that evil thoughts should have no place in this world. In this world we have our duties – human duties, societal service duties, supportive duties. In line with these are national duties. If one is a Turk, then he will love Turkey. If necessary he will suffer in his life for his nation to such an extent as was necessary in our youth. But then he asks directly – “Are you able to give such training?” That is, Refik Bey is asking the reader if the young are being given the training to make the sacrifices that the Yu¨cel members were able to make. Are they inspired in this today? Then, for a brief period, the article turns into a more usual life story. Refik tells of his schooling in U¨sku¨p. He explains that they had no national rights, and that even Turkish religious classes had been

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removed after the second class in elementary school. Macedonia then was subsumed in “Southern Serbia,” and the intent in schools and cultural activities was to “Serbianize” the populace until the onset of World War II. The Germans occupied them in two days. Refik noted that he watched the country (Yugoslavia) collapse as a young man of 22. The Germans brought the Bulgarians. Five years later he watched the collapse of the giant German state as well. Refik wrote that earlier in 1938 he had been one of the founders of the “Assistance Society,” but the Germans had closed it down. Then the Macedonians imprisoned the leaders of the secret Turkish Yu¨cel organization in 1947 that they had founded during the war in 1941. He continued, As a result of the trial, I spent seven years in prisons. In April 1958, I came to the Motherland and joined my friends in activities we could find in working for our dernek. There are memories of two thousand political prisoners for seven years in prisons in different places. This last part is what Refik Bey will then focus on. The rest of this life story is about his life in the prisons of Macedonia. Unfortunately the editors of the Rumeli bulletin did not include it all together, but rather put most of the part on the prison life into the bulletin that came out the next year. That was unfortunate, since the ending of Refik’s life story explained the focus on the prison years and reinforced the message of the first article on the Yu¨cel Event. I will present all the parts on Refik’s life in the prisons of Macedonia as he wrote them. Refik first describes a day at Idrisova Prison near Skopje, where they made bricks for construction sites. The bell rings at 4 am. After a ladle of tea, they gather in the yard in front of the prison in lines with their hands behind their backs, and walk for an hour. Speaking is forbidden. Then they go to the work site, where different groups work on different projects. In most careful detail Refik describes how in groups of nine they make bricks – how they prepare the mud, carry it in wheelbarrows, how they put it on tables in molds, get the finished bricks out of the molds, take the new bricks to where they are needed, carefully but

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quickly clean out the corners of the molds, and run to get more mud ready and so forth. A normal production number for such a group would have been 3,500 bricks a day. But they had to produce 5,000 bricks a day. This called for skillful efficiencies and hard work despite the conditions. They are allowed half an hour for lunch, and then it was back to work until nightfall. With his work he must run throughout the day. And the main thing was not to be injured, and at the same time to make the required number of bricks. It is reminiscent of parts of Solzhenitsyn’s famous account of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch (1962). Refik describes several other forms of work they found for the political prisoners to do in other prisons. At one place they are ordered to cut down poplar trees. Since most of the political prisoners are townsmen, they have little idea how to do this. They ended up carrying heavy trees, sometimes three men to a tree. Brickmaking and working barefoot in muddy canals seemed easier. At another place they are ordered to gather strawberries and everyone smiles. But they find it backbreaking since to make their quotas they cannot stand up. At the end of the day again they wish for other work. In still another prison, the prison commander decides some will be able to work in shops if they have skills. This will be much lighter work and Refik Bey is hopeful. But when he is taken to a shop, the first question he is asked is, “How long is your sentence?” When he says, “Twenty years,” the owner rejects him outright, and he is returned to the prison. There they make fun of the political prisoners who are attorneys, doctors, professors, or accountants. According to the prison commander, they have no skills. What the commander wants is cobblers, tailors, carpenters, electricians, or lathe operators. But what is sad is that although Refik Bey’s father was an Islamic scholar, due to the situation of Serbian rule, Refik Bey himself was trained as a tailor. He does have a craft skill. But due to his long sentence, he was not allowed to make it known. No one would listen to him after hearing the length of his sentence. The last example of prison life that Refik Bey describes is in the south of Macedonia where again the prisoners are making bricks, but Refik has an additional duty of carrying the cauldron full of food for the prisoners to the work site each day. He describes the distance as from Aksaray to Sirkeci train station in Istanbul. And it is not level but up and down

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hills. And the cauldron is full of food. To carry it back at night is not so bad, but in the morning it is so heavy, it takes two men, with blankets on their shoulders, and there are armed guards who walk with them. Why does Refik Bey tell us all this now? Were the times of those seven years in the prisons of Macedonia more memorable than any other time in his life? Did they mark him in ways that stood out more now that he was getting older? Was this focus on prison life an attempt to remind people of the evil actions of others that he mentioned in the frame at the beginning? Or was there a more focused message? Near the end of Refik’s article, he writes about time and about death. He mentions that when a prisoner had only one month left of imprisonment, he would wait anxiously for the days to be done. He might wake up and say that he had only 17 more days to go. Refik would say to himself, “And I had 17 more years to go!” For this reason, he wrote, the years passed with difficulty. But I want to make one thing clear. With totalitarian regimes, even the last day is important. That is because when a prisoner dies, they do not give the body to the near and dear, and they do not let them know where they buried him. That is, a prisoner could die on the last day of confinement and then all would be lost, according to Refik. For Muslims this is important. I think it is important for other people, too, but it is especially unfinished for Muslims. There should be washing of the body and proper burial in a Muslim cemetery. Prayers should be said. And 40-day prayers are good, too. Mevlids, annual remembrance events, are even better, for they bring the community together. But Refik does not make the appeal on the basis of religion. Rather, Refik lets us know that one of the things that kept him going in the prisons was fear of dying while a prisoner. He knew if this happened his body would not be given to his family, nor would they even know where he was buried. Thus a central purpose in focusing on his prison experiences is to make even more personal what he had requested for the Yu¨cel leaders in the first article. All those years in prison he had lived in fear of dying and having his own body thrown away, with no one knowing where it was.

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His second article, his life story, is a call for human dignity as well, but from the vantage of one who lived the fear of losing it every day for over seven years in prison at hard labor. Did anyone hear Refik’s specific requests for human dignity for the Yu¨cel leaders? Maybe not among politicians in Macedonia. But in Turkey people did. The response came thanks to the dernek that he had served so many years. It came over the years in the form of ritual and ceremony, a form that reaches people when most other forms of communication fail.

In Istanbul the Yu¨cel Mevlid Grows Refik Bey passed away in 2005 at the age of 86. Macedonia never responded to his request for reburial of the Yu¨cel leaders. And yet before he passed away, it was clear that the Yu¨cel leaders would not be forgotten in Turkey. Under the auspices of the Rumeli Dernek, Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu published the first booklet on the Yu¨cel Tes¸kilatı, “The Yu¨cel Organization,” in 2003. It had a plain white cover with the logo and name of the Rumeli Association at the top. Inside the cover there was a message from Kenan S¸ahinler, the president of the dernek at the time. He wrote, “The Yu¨cel martyrs and other long-suffering members have earned an unforgettable place in the hearts of Yugoslav Turks.” Yıldırım Bey’s introduction is masterful. He begins with how his mother had answered his question as to why they had emigrated from ¨ sku¨p. She had said that they were forced to, that they could not live U with people who had done such things, implying the execution of the Yu¨cel leaders and the imprisonment of so many others. And from 1950 to 1970, about 200,000 people had left. He continues with how the Yu¨cel members who had immigrated to Istanbul held mevlid ceremonies in memory of their friends each year, beginning in 1957. Then in 1999 the Rumeli Association assumed responsibility for the annual Yu¨cel mevlids. But since there was little published on the Yu¨cel, there was need to have a publication that would introduce the young to the Yu¨cel organization and what had happened to its leaders in Skopje in 1948. In preparing this Yıldırım Bey thanks the Yu¨cel organization members, ¨ zer and other members who shared knowledge and especially Refik O

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photographs. He also thanks President Kenan S¸ahinler and the others for their support. In the 32-page booklet for the first time there were actual photographs of the Yu¨cel leaders who had been executed, photographs that made them real! You could see how young they were and what promise they had had: a teacher, an attorney, a publisher, and a saddler. On the next page there were more photographs of the executed – one from the days of his military service, another at his wedding and from an identity card. The following pages had photographs of 34 members of the Yu¨cel organization who had been condemned to varying prison sentences at hard labor. The faces were so different. Some were young men; some were middle-aged men who looked like fathers and businessmen and men in the community. They were from all professions, from teachers and professors to barbers and carpenters, a judge, a cobbler, a lathe operator, leather craftsmen, and a policeman. Yıldırım Bey then included three sections on major periods of migration from the Balkans to Turkey. He followed this with short sections on the founding of the Yu¨cel organization in 1941, its activities, and the arrest of the first group of its members in 1947 and their trial in 1948. This was followed by the arrest and trial of the second group, and then the third group in 1948. He listed the names of both groups and their sentences. But this was just the beginning. In 2006, Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, under the auspices of the dernek, brought out a second booklet that was an expanded edition of the first, also entitled, “The Yu¨cel Organization.” It had a color cover and additional pages. One was a page from the Trakya Post of March 1948, the only newspaper known to have protested the execution of the four young Turkish leaders in Skopje. There was a concluding statement by Yıldırım Bey in which he made clear that the result of the Yu¨cel trial was the massive emigration of Turks from Macedonia. And that was its intent. On a larger scale the purpose of such state terrorist actions was to wipe out the Turks from Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, it worked. And as their numbers decreased, Turks continued to feel insecure and unwanted in the Balkans. There was also an announcement that a major article on the 60th anniversary of the Yu¨cel organization had been published in a major Turkish publication called Aksiyon. At last this was reaching the more mainstream press.

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But there was even more. In 2007– 8, when I was in Istanbul, there was new research that surfaced about the Yu¨cel leaders. People had gotten a short propaganda film of the 1948 trial from Macedonia itself. The false allegations, the defendants whose faces showed they had been tortured, the prosecutor and judge, and the falseness of the people clapping in response to the proceedings were reminders of the horror of the times. But more touching were the hidden messages from the martyrs themselves that were found after their deaths, especially from S¸uayb Aziz, the head of the group, that only became known in 2008. After they had been executed by firing squad, their few belongings were returned to their families. Hidden in the coat sleeve of S¸uayb, they found a piece of paper from a chocolate wrapper. On the back of the chocolate wrapper was a note that S¸uayb Aziz had written to his wife in Ottoman Turkish, that is, Turkish in Arabic letters, the day before his execution. It is a most touching note of a family man, addressed to “My Life Friend Nigar” (his wife’s name). He mentions each of his four children, and asks his wife to kiss them and to hug them for him. He asks her to work at their education. And tells her to move from their home to another house. He suggests who may help them. And he closes by saying that he is a sacrifice for his millet. Millet is an old term that can be understood as “country” or “religious grouping.”3 People cried when they heard this. Not just a martyr, and one of the most educated Muslims of the Balkans at this time who had studied at al-Azhar in Cairo earlier in the 1930s, he was also a loving father and a husband. How was this not found earlier? In a footnote4 it was written that a grandson of S¸uayb had the piece of paper, but probably could not read the Ottoman Turkish. He had sent it to the secretary of the Yu¨cel organization in Istanbul. For some reason it had not been made public earlier. It was found among the papers of the secretary, probably after his death. And it required someone like Yıldırım Bey who knew Ottoman Turkish to read it. In 2012 yet a third edition of the booklet, “The Yu¨cel Organization,” was published under the continuing auspices of the dernek. This cover was also in color and included the photographs of the four martyrs with the famous Ottoman Stone Bridge, the symbol of Skopje, below them.

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It included the photographs of the four martyrs on separate pages, with a short biography of each below his photograph. This edition included the recent research from Macedonia with photographs from the propaganda film with commentary. It also included the recent research on the messages that were found after the deaths of two of the martyrs, that of S¸uayb Aziz, as described above, with a photograph of the chocolate wrapper and the Ottoman Turkish, and a description of a message from Nazmi O¨mer as well. It also included segments from Refik ¨ mer’s description of his time in prisons of Macedonia. O These booklets go a long way toward providing young people, or any people, in Turkey with background and understanding of the Yu¨cel organization and the trial and execution of its leaders and imprisonment of its members. The question is, what was the impetus for their writing and publishing? And why did the Rumeli Turks Association take over the Yu¨cel mevlid in 1999? When I went to the basement library and archive of the Rumeli Turks Association, there were shelves of videos of the Yu¨cel mevlid beginning in 1999. It was clear that 1999 was an important beginning of serious organizational support by the Rumeli Turks Association of the Yu¨cel mevlid, but why then? I went back through bulletins and archives to try to trace the relationship of the Yu¨cel mevlid with the dernek through earlier years. What I found was that while there were announcements that Yu¨cel mevlids had occurred, the main mevlids announced beforehand in the bulletin were those held during Ramadan in memory of the founders of the dernek. But since there were members of the dernek who were also Yu¨cel members, when anniversaries occurred there were announcements of those. There was also an article in the Rumeli bulletin of 1978,5 which happened to be the 30th anniversary of the execution of the leaders. This article explained their constitution, the anti-communist and proAtatu¨rk stand of the organization, and the politics of the times. It gave no comment on Turkey of the time; however, it did comment on Russian influence and how much this contributed to the harshness of the sentencing of the Yu¨cel members. It also closed with the line, “The graves of our martyrs still today are not known.”6 The next article on the Yu¨cel was Refik O¨zer’s in the 1994 bulletin. It was very different from earlier articles in length, personal quality and

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specificity, and the requests at the end. It did, however, pick up on the last line of the 1978 article and push it to its moral conclusion. So what had changed in the 1990s that led to the different relationship of the Rumeli Dernek with the Yu¨cel mevlid? First, it must be said that the political situation had changed. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, support of the Yu¨cel movement no longer went against Turkish foreign policy. This change in political conditions should not be underrated. For many decades after World War II, Turkey maintained friendly relations with Yugoslavia and did not want to antagonize its neighbor, the Soviet Union, unnecessarily. This restricted the ability of the dernek to speak publically about its support of the Yu¨cel leaders and their organization. But once this was removed, the dernek became much more active in its support of the Yu¨cel leaders. Secondly, the Balkans were in the news in the 1990s. There were the Wars of Yugoslav Succession – the Bosnian War and the Kosova War. People in Turkey were much more aware of the Balkans, and Turkey was involved in multiple ways. Turkey recognized the new states that declared their independence with the breakup of Yugoslavia. It aided refugees from Bosnia and from Kosova, and it worked diplomatically and economically in the Balkan peninsula now that the barriers of the communist block had been lifted. The dernek was involved in helping in the Balkans, too. This new familiarity made confronting the communist past more feasible. Thirdly, the members of the Yu¨cel organization had been growing old and dying. Who would continue the Yu¨cel mevlid? With voices like that of Refik O¨zer to call for dignity for the martyrs, others in the dernek took up the baton. And fourthly, when the 50th anniversary of the execution of the Yu¨cel leaders took place in 1998, the president of the dernek was Lu¨tfu¨ Tu¨rkhan. He recognized that the young knew very little about the Yu¨celciler, and that there needed to be publications on them, with photographs. ¨ zer, “Yu¨celciler, the 50th So he had a booklet published by Refik O Anniversary of their Martyrdom, 1948– 1998,” distributed at the Yu¨cel mevlid that year. I see this as the beginning of the movement that led to the publishing of books on the Yu¨cel organization by Ag˘anog˘lu in the twenty-first century.

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The next year, in 1999, the dernek assumed responsibility for the Yu¨cel mevlid. With the broader organizational base, participation increased. Yu¨cel members were always important to the dernek as individuals. But now the mevlid for the Yu¨cel leaders has come to have greater meaning for the dernek. In a sense, the Yu¨cel mevlid is a symbol for the dernek itself. I do not think that the people of the dernek realized this at first. But now it is more apparent. The sacrifice of the young Yu¨cel leaders, coupled with their activities to preserve Turkish culture and solidarity, combine to make them an inspiration to the young and old alike. The loss of their young lives, their martyrdom, melds with the loss of people forced to leave their homes. So when they chant and pray for them in the mevlid, giving them proper Islamic prayers and community acclamation, even if their bodies have not been properly washed and buried, they work to heal their own loss in being pulled from their homes. Ritual, like poetry, works for what cannot be reached in other ways. When the people participate in the mevlid for the Yu¨cel martyrs, and voice that they will never forget them and their sacrifice, while affirming their love of the Prophet at his birth, they are also affirming in poetry, with rosewater, and together: We will not forget where we come from and who we are, and what we hold dear.

Hacer Abla’s Inspiration in the End Before the booklets on the Yu¨cel organization were published with photographs of the young leaders and members, it was people like Refik ¨ zer who made the Yu¨cel real to people in Turkey. He had been a O member and had spent years in prison. And it was also people like Hacer ¨ mer, one of the Yu¨cel martyrs, who also Abla, the widow of Nazmi O made the Yu¨cel movement real to people in Turkey – that is, if people knew enough to ask or bothered to ask. But for those who knew anything about the Yu¨cel organization, both Refik Bey and Hacer Abla were most important. It is fortunate that both had long lives so that younger generations could learn from them and get to know them. But that does not mean their lives were easy by any means.

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¨ sku¨p. As mentioned earlier, she was Hacer Abla was born in 1923 in U a seamstress. Her father was positively inclined to the Yu¨cel organization. And when she was 23, he announced to her that Nazmi ¨ mer, one of the Yu¨cel leaders, wanted to marry her. They married in O 1946. They had only been married nine months when he was arrested from home and taken away by the Macedonian police. A week later her daughter, Ayla, was born. Hacer Abla always remembered the last time she saw her husband. It was the only time he saw his daughter, who was three months old at the time. It was in the prison. When she went with his family first they only saw a screen. When they took it away they saw him and all started to cry. “Do not cry,” he said. “Why are you crying? I am going but behind me I trust in millions of sisters and brothers [other Turks]. Long live Atatu¨rk, long live Turkey!” Immediately they took him by the arms and led him away. And soon after, her own father was imprisoned. Since he had given his daughter to a Yu¨cel leader, they reasoned, he too must be part of the organization. They sentenced him to 20 years. When the authorities had returned her husband’s belongings, Hacer Abla had held his bed quilt to her face to kiss and smell it. At this time she had found a note hidden in it. In the note Nazmi O¨mer had addressed his mother, father, and siblings and had told them to take good care of his wife, Hacer, and daughter, Ayla. When Hacer Abla recounted this in 2004 for a Turkish journal, she added, “I did not see my husband ever again. I never saw his grave. I do not know where they buried him.”7 As Refik Bey had feared while in prison himself, this human dignity was denied to her as a wife for her husband. And yet Hacer Abla is much more than this. She was so alive. Her success as an actor in the Turkish Theater in Skopje was evidence of that. She emigrated to Turkey in 1957. She worked to support her parents and her daughter, Ayla. I asked her if she ever worked as an actor in Turkey. “Not much,” she said. She mostly worked in an office of a textile company. She did some work for films, but it was a larger market and she did not have connections. She was older by then, too. What she loved was her singing group in Beykoz. But she never remarried. At the Yu¨cel mevlids in Istanbul throughout the years, she could always be found in the front row. And that was right.

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When I met Hacer Abla in 2007, she sat down next to me and when people prayed for those who had been lost the previous year, she began to cry. Her daughter, Ayla, had died that year of cancer. I did not know her and just put my arm around her. People later told me more about her. I was used to stories of loss, but hers seemed to go beyond most. Besides loss, many in the Rumeli community in Istanbul had also experienced trauma. Certainly the arrest of her husband from their home, and then only seeing him once, followed by his execution, was traumatic. Research on trauma among people who have experienced it earlier in their lives tells us that even when people cope fairly well, the trauma can return later in life. It returns when people are bound to lose people to death and reminds people of their earlier traumatic loss.8 Clearly this was true of Hacer Abla. And yet, still at 84 she stood so straight! I took a photograph of her next to Hidayet Hanım beside a handsome velvet banner on the day that women brought in their sewing work to display. Hacer Abla had brought in a nightgown she had sewn much earlier and it was truly lovely. Such delicate stitches in patterns across the front in soft shades of green. But that same day I heard that she was going to have to move to the huzurevi of the Rumeli Vakfı, that is, “the old people’s home.” She had only a young grandson left in Turkey and some distant relatives. This was not good. And so in the next month she moved there. In January the women’s commission of the Rumeli Dernek visited Hacer Abla at the old people’s home. She was dressed in black and fresh looking, and she had been waiting for us. I gave her a copy of the photograph I had taken of her with Hidayet Hanım a few months before. She was pleased. Then she asked me how I was in Macedonian. She regularly did this. She knew I was foreign, but I don’t think she quite knew I was American. Maybe it was because I know Albanian and Turkish. I was shown to Hacer Abla’s room. She had a view of the garden and some trees. She had photographs of her daughter on the wall. Before she had had to share a room, but then someone went on pilgrimage and she got that room. I vowed to visit enough to make sure she kept it. But the next time that I saw Hacer Abla was at the Yu¨cel mevlid. It would be her last one.

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By then, in 2008, the Yu¨cel mevlid had become a major event of the Rumeli Association. I walked from the tramway stop at Yusufpas¸a to the wedding salon where it was held. As I entered the door, young men in suits from the dernek youth commission shook my hand to welcome me. Then I saw Hacer Abla. She was standing alone off to the side. I went up to her and hugged her. This was her day, for the sacrifice is more real when the widow of a martyr is present. She had helped make this real to the community for years, and now they were going to continue it. On a table there were booklets about the Yu¨cel organization, about migration from the Balkans, and another book called Farewell Balkans. I knew these books so I passed by and went into the salon. On the main floor were men, while on the balcony above were mostly women. I went upstairs and found a place with women I knew. There looked to be about 300 people in attendance already. In front on the main floor there was a stage with four men on it. There were two imams and, between them, two mevlid reciters. Above the stage was a huge banner: YUCEL SEHITLERINI UNUTTURMAYACAGIZ ¨ CEL MARTYRS TO BE [“WE WILL NOT CAUSE THE YU FORGOTTEN”] I looked for Hacer Abla but could not find her. Hopefully someone was taking good care of her. Then we were all given ayran, a yogurt drink, and simit pogaca, the classic U¨sku¨p food. We were discussing food and dialects when tea came, just before the program began. First a man recited the “Istiklal March,” the national anthem, most fervently. Then the president of the dernek welcomed people, “Beloved fellow townsfolk and friends,” he began. He thanked the family that had donated the use of the wedding salon for free again this year. And since the father was ill, we all prayed for him. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu spoke next. He said he had gone to a mevlid for the Yu¨cel for the first time in 1996. It was a shame that the Yu¨cel martyrs were not better known. So he had put together a monograph on them. And now, for the first time, in 2008, a discussion of the Yu¨cel martyrs had occurred on television. He had been asked to be part of the panel, but had preferred to speak with the announcer by phone out of modesty.

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I had watched the program on television. I had seen Yıldırım Bey’s booklet in the hands of the professor on television. So his source was Yıldırım Bey as well. And, of course, Yıldırım Bey had learned much of his knowledge about the Yu¨celciler from Refik O¨zer. What Yıldırım Bey had read to the announcer was what S¸uayb Aziz had written in Ottoman Turkish to his wife on the back of a chocolate wrapper that was discovered hidden in his coat after his execution. After giving loving advice about their four children to his wife, he had closed the missive to his wife in a special way. Yıldırım had paused to read this closing with special emphasis. Milletimin kurbanıyım, “I am a sacrifice for my people.” The terms he uses are charged. “Millet” is the term used for the different religious groupings in the Ottoman Empire, so his millet implies “the Muslim people” as well. And kurban, the word used for “sacrifice,” is used at the Muslim holiday of the same name, when the Prophet Ibrahim was willing to sacrifice his son Ismail in obedience to God. Yıldırım Bey then announced that instead of listening to him speak further about the Yu¨cel Event, as he had done other years, he was passing it on to a younger man of the Youth Commission who was a student at Bilgi University. He had done research on the Yu¨cel in Macedonia and had even helped prepared a video on them. The young man presented a prepared talk on the Yu¨cel movement, their activities, and how they had tried to resist the assimilation policies of the Yugoslav state. He summarized the court trials of 63 people, in which four were condemned to death and subsequently executed. To this day their bodies have not been found. Others were given long prison terms that were commuted on the understanding that they would then leave Macedonia. In other words, it was a way to get rid of prominent Turks in Macedonia. The young university student played the video. Vecihe Hanım, one of the women at my table, recognized her school. She said that the mother of one of the condemned men went as high as Tito to try to get commutation. She failed and was never the same. They began the Mevlid-i S¸erif. One of the mevlid reciters gave a short rendition that were he to come to earth a second time he would come as a martyr. Then we began with the fatiha, the beginning verse of the Qur’an. The mevlid reciters went to work, chanting rhythmically by

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heart. They were setting the scene in Turkish for the birth of the Prophet. Many people around me knew the verses the reciters were chanting on the stage below. A young man came around and poured rose-scented cologne into our hands. He said, ‘The rose is the symbol of the Prophet, so the scent evokes the Prophet.” This was followed by another fatiha, and then “Mustafa comes.” That is another name for the Prophet. Then they chanted how to assist the Prophet’s mother, Amine. We all stood up and faced Mecca with our arms folded in front of us, right over left. Women reached out to swipe other’s backs gently, to assist in the birth. The Prophet was born. We said another fatiha. More blessings. We sat back down and they chanted more. Then another man who had joined them chanted the part of Yunus, the prophet, with the famous refrain from the Turkish folk poet, Yunus Emre, “Come see what this love has done to me,” and more lines from Yunus Emre that everyone knew. It seemed as if it were a time of zikr, of remembrance chants, that I know so well from Sufi centers. The men on the first floor all knew the chants as well. One of the imams read a list of blessings for all: health, relief from debts, a special prayer for health for the father of the wedding salon, for the dernek, for immigrants. Then he said, I go into the garden where there are roses, the smell of the Prophet pervades. Everyone but me knew when it was over. They stood up and got their belongings. What a remarkable memorial for the dead who had been executed in 1948, 60 years before – although martyrs never really die. It combined with solidarity for the Turks of U¨sku¨p who had been forced out of their homes, support for the Rumeli Association they had established in Istanbul, and their love of the Prophet. Further, it was also a family ritual that all know well, for it is recited in homes again and again. But where was Hacer Abla? I was still worried about her. And so I visited her again at the old people’s home that month. She greeted me again in Macedonian. Добра сум, I answered, and Како си:

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“I am fine. How are you?” Then I went into Turkish. She did not seem to mind. But she kept moving in and out of what we were talking about. She mentioned a problem she had had on a bus. It sounded as if she had fallen. I asked to see her room. She was still in the single and it looked in good shape. We had tea together. When I left she wanted to see me to the door, but the elevator was busy. I did not want her to take the stairs. I hugged her goodbye upstairs. The next day she went into a coma. That was 27 March. They took her to the hospital. She never recovered. On 9 April she passed away. The funeral was the same day in the late afternoon. It was held at Murat Pas¸a Camii in Aksaray, a mosque that looks like the Isa Beg Mosque in Skopje ¨ sku¨plu¨ want their funerals there. and so the U When I got there the courtyard was full of people. The prayers had already begun inside the mosque. I was introduced to her grandson. To the left of the mosque there was an awning and under it was a small green covered casket with gold letters on it in Arabic and Turkish. It was a verse from the Qur’an that we are from God and to Him we return. In front of the casket were four wreaths: one from family, one from the Rumeli Vakfı, one from the Rumeli Dernek, and one from the Beykoz Koro. When I saw the last one I smiled to myself. I even took a picture of the wreaths. I remembered Hacer Abla telling me that she had gone to a concert and sung along. Someone in the group had realized that she knew all the songs. She came up to her later and asked her to join. I even talked with a woman from the Beykoz Chorus. Clearly they loved her. I was glad she had this other part of her life and they remembered her. The imam came out of the mosque. Men picked up the casket. As they carried it past, I saw a scarf of embroidered flowers on the front of the casket. It reminded me of Hacer Abla’s beautiful seamstress work. Then they put the casket in the hearse. Only the family goes to the burial, I was told. But there will be a memorial at the Rumeli Vakfı this evening. I found some distant relatives who had a car and wanted to go to the memorial, but they did not know where the Rumeli Vakfı was. I needed a ride and told them I could direct them. They half believed me – a foreigner – but I had visited Hacer Abla enough and I did know the way.

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When I got to the Culture House of the Rumeli Vakfı I found Muhterem Hanım, who had been visiting relatives but had tired of their talk and decided she wanted to say goodbye to Hacer Abla. Where shall we sit? Wherever is a microphone, there the men will sit, I was told. So we sat far from the microphones. At head table were an imam and two hafiz from Laleli Camii. They had fine voices and chanted both kasides and verses from the Qur’an. There was the usual part of Ya Sin, the verse that is chanted for funerals. Then there were prayers in Turkish, too. They stated that now Hacer Abla will be together with her husband in paradise after all these years. I thought, she hardly remembers him. She will want to be with her daughter who died just last year. And the chanting continued. Amin. They began to pass out helva, a flour-based food whose sweetness was meant to take away the sadness of death. “Store-bought,” noted Muhterem Hanım. Eventually Muhterem Hanım and I walked out to a deserted square ¨ sku¨p and an empty bus. Slowly others joined us. They were all from U and all had been at the memorial at the Rumeli Vakfı. We talked about Hacer Abla. One said, “If you didn’t know Hacer Abla, you were not ¨ sku¨p.” from U Another man got on the bus. We talked more. He asked if I had been to the Yu¨cel mevlid. Yes, I told him, I had. “Then you must have heard me,” he said. I recited the Istiklal Mars¸ı. I have done that for 30 years now at the mevlids.” First in the homes? I asked. “Yes,” he said. I smiled for I remembered him well. Finally the bus driver showed up and we slowly wound through the quiet streets of old Istanbul. Muhterem Hanım said, “The 40-day mevlid for Hacer Abla will be at the dernek.” So we had that to look forward to. Her memories were so fresh, maybe by then we would be ready to truly say goodbye to her. The death notice was to the point. ¨ mer, a founder of the Yu¨cel The honored wife, Hacer, of Nazmi O organization in former Yugoslavia and one of its four martyrs, has died. Married one year, she became a widow and did not remarry. Last year she buried her only daughter. More of this grief she could not endure.

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Hacer Abla’s 40-day mevlid was held at the dernek. It was women only. By two in the afternoon there were 50 women present. It was held in the front room. They brought in the ayran and simit pogaca. It is so good, all that butter in the simit pogaca. We ate as others came in. The chanters asked for sugar and water on the table in front of them. Above them Yahya Kemal, Mustafa Kemal, and Mehmet Akıf looked down from the wall. But below it was all women. We put on our scarves. An older woman began chanting in Arabic from the Qur’an. She chanted from Ya Sin. She asked for the name of Hacer Abla’s daughter – Ayla. She added her and the Yu¨cel to the prayer. Then a middle-aged woman took up the chanting. She knew the Arabic by heart, as did many others who were reciting along or following it in little booklets. A woman to my right was asked to read. She was the daughter of a ¨ sku¨p. Her Arabic was very fine. Another woman was asked hafız from U to read and her Arabic was very good, too.

Figure 20

Women in dernek with mevlid chanters

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In this way four women had recited or read from the Qur’an quite professionally for the first half hour. Then there were prayers in Turkish, chants, nefes, that is, spiritually inspired poems, lovely ones. One of the chanters even did one in Albanian for me. And at one time there was a chant where we turned to each other on either side with palms facing the other, and then brought our hands within the hands of the other woman. Then we took our hands down to our faces for sharing baraka, the bounty of God. The recitations from the mevlid were in Turkish, of course. Whenever the name of the Prophet was said, people put their right hand to their hearts. After these sections, the middle-aged woman said a prayer in Turkish for all of us. We responded with “amin” to each part. She prayed for healing, amin; for health, amin; for good grades on exams, amin; for marriage for our relatives, amin; for children, amin; for homes, amin; and it went on, amin, amin, amin. Then we took off our scarves. A younger woman served us baklava, which was delicious, not store bought. And of course tea and water.

Figure 21

Preparations at dernek for 40-day mevlid for Hacer Abla

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I remarked to the woman to my right that tea was best. She told me I would have a long life. What this all means is that life goes on. The mevlid had put the cares of life in perspective so that we could entrust them to powers beyond us. The prayers were beautiful in ways beyond us. Ritual does this.9 It seems simple and yet it is not. Hacer Abla would want us to keep coming together and drinking tea. She would especially like us to keep singing.

EPILOGUE I RUMELI MUSLIMS SUPPORT THEIR OWN AND OTHERS IN ISTANBUL

How the migrants from the Balkans came to view themselves in Istanbul is central to this study. They were not prepared for the changes that modern Turkey had wrought with its secular policies from 1923 to the 1950s. They fit in better with older generations in Turkey, for they had preserved the older Ottoman societal forms and religious customs as a Muslim minority in the Balkans. At the outset it must have made them feel even more like outsiders to be accused by some in Turkey of being communists even though they had fled Yugoslavia. But to be laughed at for their Rumelian dialect of Turkish must have been the most cruel of all. It is therefore not surprising that they emphasized their home area as the Vardar region in Macedonia in the name of their association in the early decades. Founded first as a hometown association in 1950 and activated in 1953 when Yugoslavia allowed Muslims to leave, the “Vardarlılar Mutual Assistance Association” gave them strength. They could take care of each other better as a group, and people who had come earlier were very willing to serve as leaders for the newcomers. In such a group their dialect of Turkish was expected. The organizational skills they brought were ones they had developed as members of guilds; most of the early members were also members of craft guilds and tradesmen’s organizations. Back in Skopje many had been members of Sufi orders as well. Some who had come before World War II had even worked with a

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group known as the “Istanbul Immigrant Assistance Association” that tried to help Bulgarian Turks adjust when they came en masse in 1950. But over the 1960s they became more confident and changed their name to one that was more inclusive. In 1967 they became the “Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association.” This was not tied to the Vardar region in Macedonia but encompassed all the Balkan lands. Ethnically it was inclusive as well, since Albanians, Slavic Muslims, and Turks are all subsumed under Rumeli Turks in the Balkans. It also evoked Ottoman times, since “Rumeli” was the Ottoman name for southeast Europe. Still, the name change cannot have been an easy decision. The fact that there were no bulletins around this time suggests this. When a justification was finally published for the name change, the main reason given was cultural – the association would work to make known the extent and richness of the Rumeli Turkish culture that the newer nations there were either claiming or destroying. In Turkey there is a certain prejudice by some Anatolians against people from “the other side of the sea” – that is, from Rumeli. Atatu¨rk tended to surround himself with people from Rumeli, so others thought they were favored. However people who have lost much work hard. Many from Rumeli were urban folk who did succeed, but certainly not all. I do not know if this was an argument against the new name or if some feared the association with the Ottomans; in 1967 invoking the Ottomans was definitely not in fashion. In any case, their new name as “Rumeli Turks” also implied their Islamic faith. In their embroidery and in the classical Turkish music their chorus sang, they expressed Ottoman cultural values as “heirs of the lost realm.” In this, Islam is central for them and builds on their identity as Ottoman Muslims. They gather the second day of Muslim holidays, thereby reinforcing the Muslim calendar. They pay their zekat, the “poor tax,” one of the five pillars of Islam, to their migrant association to support those in need. And their charitable activities fall largely within Muslim practices that help maintain people’s dignity. All children should have a set of new clothes at the end of Ramadan. This is understood and accepted. Supporting students in need builds on the Prophet’s admonition “to seek knowledge even unto China.” That they do this for both their own children and for others in need attests to their generosity, a central virtue in Islam. But they go beyond this.

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Their ways of supporting those in need should be a model for international aid. In the Balkans after the wars of the 1990s I saw examples of great waste. Refugee camps are based on military barracks, and international aid on providing emergency food. But refugees have long-term needs and they are families, not soldiers. Their needs are much more various than emergency food. What I saw in international aid was goodwill in simplistic models, administered by people who did not know the local languages, cultures, or histories. The longer international aid organizations stayed, the more irrelevant they became. They did not ask local people what they needed. They did not learn local languages. Personnel stayed for relatively short periods of time, or if they stayed longer, they took three-day holidays to Greece, received salaries seven times those of locals, and remained amazingly uninformed about the local scene. The few exceptions were smaller international aid groups from Scandinavia with extended financial calendars, whose personnel remained in the field, sought out local groups, and listened. Even they could not begin to compete with a well-run local group that operated efficiently along shared cultural norms and that responded over the course of 60 years as community needs changed like the Rumeli Dernek. A Muslim organization structured according to the Muslim calendar and holidays, led by local leaders who understand and minister to the needs of the local Muslim people – it seems so simple, yet I did not see this among international aid groups in the Balkans, where most of the refugees were Muslim. And the people of the Rumeli Dernek were eminently practical. At the time of the Sacrifice Holiday in the midst of a huge urban center, where can you sacrifice animals? The dernek rented a carwash and then cut up the meat to be frozen so they could give it out all year long on a monthly basis for families in need, selling the hides for leather. Cleanup was simple. They coped. But at the same time, they grieved. Their lives and their memories were complex. Had this contributed to their silence? Recall the question of silence. Why had people not written about their experiences or the experiences of their parents or grandparents? I remembered what Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu had told me in the library of the Rumeli Dernek when I had first arrived in Istanbul that hot October day. He had told of the death and sorrow and trauma people had experienced. It was too hard to return to such times and then keep on living a normal life. So people had not wanted to go back there.

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I remembered Emel Hanım, who had told me that her grandmother could only go to sleep at night if her clothes were laid out at the foot of her bed. Her family had been expelled in the night in each of three generations. She was only secure if the clothing was there. Then Yıldırım Bey had mentioned Turkish nationalism. Since everyone was supposed to be Turks and fit in, those with different backgrounds had no real space in much of twentieth-century Turkey. There had even been a law that other groups should not be mentioned. And finally, he had talked of the generations of immigrants, how the first generation worked so hard there was not time for anything else. Then the second also worked very hard but got a little more schooling. It was not until the third generation that there was much time for higher education and looking back. In reflecting on these explanations of the silence of the generations of Balkan migrants in Turkey, I see the first and second explanations reinforcing each other. There was much trauma, and combined with the strength of Turkish nationalism, it held people back from telling their stories of the different backgrounds they had brought from southeast Europe. And yet they are stories that are meant to be told. As I sat in the Rumeli Dernek with older men one early winter evening, I started talking about the book I wanted to write about emigrants from the Balkans to Turkey, about them and the dernek. I told them that in America people did not know about this. I said there are books and oral histories about the population transfers from Anatolia to Greece, but in Turkey this is not the case. One man said, “That is because it was such a hard time in our history. We did not want to go back to it. It was so hard.” I countered, “Still, it should be understood. It should be told so we know what happened. So it is from your perspective, too. Otherwise, there is this silence.” No one spoke. Then another man said, “What you do is important.” Another man nodded in agreement. Then he said when he first came to Turkey his father did not know any Turkish. He was speaking another language when a retired official came along and told him, “Speak Turkish here.” But my father did not know Turkish. How could he speak Turkish?

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“Did your father learn Turkish?” I asked. “Eventually, yes.” “What was the hardest time?” I asked. “The first few years.” Had those years been so hard, after all they had suffered in the Balkans, that people no longer wanted to tell others what had happened? Was it that they did not want to tell the Turks that they were not as “Turkish” in a narrow sense? Did that keep them from writing? Certainly, Turkey is better off thanks to the peoples it took in from former Ottoman lands. The Rumeli Turks drew from their trials as a minority in the Balkans, and from their difficulties when they first came to Turkey. From these difficult experiences they responded by reaching out and giving new clothing to poor children at Ramadan in Istanbul, children from all backgrounds. And they give scholarships to young people from the Balkans – and to young people from all regions of Turkey who have economic need and academic ability. Their generosity is a strength for Turkey and a model for the rest of the world. As the Rumeli woman told me proudly the day of the Ramadan clothing program when they were giving new clothing to 3,000 poor children, “And we came here with one suitcase.”

EPILOGUE II REFUGEES FLEEING INTO EUROPE THROUGH MACEDONIA

In the winter of 2016 I returned from working with Syrian, Iraqi, and Afghan refugees in transit refugee camps in Macedonia. There had been 5,000 to 8,000 refugees passing through Macedonia each day in the summer of 2015, for Macedonia lies between Greece and Serbia and thus is a strategic country on the Syrian refugee trail to Western Europe. By the winter months though, the numbers were down to 1,000 to 1,500 refugees a day. I had volunteered with Legis, a local Macedonian NGO based in Skopje. Its president is Jasmin Redzepi, of both Albanian and Bosnian background from Macedonia. Many of its leading members are from the same neighborhood in C¸air, a Muslim neighborhood in old Skopje near the Tefeyyu¨z School that so many of the emigrants to Istanbul attended. Legis was the first NGO to help the refugees in 2014 and 2015 when it was still considered illegal to do so in Macedonia. Legis brought bags of food, bottles of water, and clothing to the refugees as they walked along the train tracks from the Greek border in southern Macedonia all the way up to northern Macedonia and the Serbian border. Legis also lobbied the Macedonian government until it allowed the refugees to use public transportation so they would not have to travel the 180 kilometers across Macedonia on foot. On 18 June 2015 the Macedonian government finally agreed to allow the refugees to travel this distance by train.

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The same spirit of generosity that I had found among the emigrants from Skopje to Istanbul, I found again among the founders, workers, and volunteers of Legis. When I asked why they started working for the refugees, some said because their relatives did. Others said because their neighbors did. But many referred to Ramadan. When Ramadan came, many told me they wanted to do something for the refugees. For example, Nazife said she put together 1,000 bags of food for the refugees for Ramadan. And once she had done this, she needed to make sure they got to the refugees. She just never stopped working for the refugees after this. There were also Slavic Macedonians working with Legis for the refugees as well. As Kemal Hakimog˘lu had told me earlier in Bakırko¨y outside Istanbul, there was a spirit of generosity in Skopje. Why, they had always given much at the Sacrifice Holiday. It clearly continues to this day, despite the difficult economic conditions in present-day Macedonia, one of the poorest countries in Europe. But it is not confined to Skopje. In Tabanovce I met Albanians from Kumanova who had been volunteering every day for eight months for the refugees. When I asked them why, they said they had seen families of refugees in the Grand Mosque in Kumanova in the summer. It was the only place large enough for them to stay before the transit camp was built in September. They just started helping them and never stopped. I can only hope this generous spirit from Macedonia follows the refugees into Western Europe.

GLOSSARY

bedistan: Bey: bo¨rek: caravanserai:

ars c ¸iye: Cenab-i Hak: chetnik: Constantinople/ Istanbul:

dernek: Emniyet: esnaf: fatiha:

the central part of a Balkan or Turkish market where the most valuable goods are kept Turkish term of respect for a man, honorific, placed after first name a filo dough-layered food with cheese, or spinach and cheese, or sometimes meat in the middle inns in former Ottoman lands with courtyards and places for merchants and their animals to spend up to three days along major trade routes major markets, Turkish term the Majesty of Truth, a Persianate form for God that is all encompassing followers of Mihailovic´ during World War II the great city on the Bosphorus and Sea of Marmara, known as Constantinople in Byzantine and much of Ottoman times; known as Istanbul since the Republic of Turkey days in 1923 association, here an immigrant association (a Turkish term) Turkish State Security guilds for craftsmen the first chapter of the Qur’an; some say it holds all the truths of the Qur’an

236

URBAN MUSLIM MIGRANTS IN ISTANBUL

gurbet: hafiz: hamam:

han: Hanım: haydut: helva: illahi: kale: kapıcık: kermes: Kosova/Kosovo:

landsmanshaftn: medrese: Mevlevi:

Mevlevihane: mevlud/mevlid:

mihrab:

muhajir:

the condition of being away from home one who has memorized the entire Qur’an bath house; the Ottoman Empire used to have many hamams where people would go to bathe on a regular basis a merchant’s hotel Turkish title of respect for a woman, honorific, placed after first name bandit a dense wheat-based sweet with butter and sugar, given at memorials to sweeten memories Sufi chant in which the Name of God is repeated frequently fortress small door a bazaar-like auction since 2008 an independent country north of Macedonia, south of Serbia but formerly an autonomous region within Yugoslavia; the first form, Kosova, is the official Albanian name of the country, the second form, Kosovo, is the general English form. hometown associations founded by Jewish, usually Yiddish-speaking immigrants in the New World Muslim school a Sufi order founded from the followers of Jelaleddin Rumi in Konya in the thirteenth century, known for the beauty of its music and its way of praising God through turning the center of the Mevlevi Order in a city a prayer in praise of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad that is given in the local language; also a ceremony that centers around such a prayer the arch in a mosque that marks the direction to Mecca so that Muslims can orient themselves that way in prayer emigrant

GLOSSARY

nalband: Ramadan/ Ramazan: s¸ekerpare: sema: simit pogaca: tarikat: tekke: ¨ sku¨p/Skopje: U vakıf/vakfı: Ya Sin Sura: Yu¨cel Tes¸kilati:

zekat:

zikir:

237

blacksmith the Muslim month of fasting a delicious dessert of wheat dough soaked in syrup Sufi ceremony of remembrance, associated with the Mevlevi Order a food specialty of Skopje, biscuit-like with buttery filling the Sufi or Muslim mystic orders a Sufi center, where Muslim dervishes and other members come together names for the main city of Macedonia; the first is Turkish, the second Slavic Islamic religious-based foundation a chapter of the Qur’an that is often recited at funerals the “eminent organization,” a local Turkish organization that was founded during World War II in Skopje to help the local Turkish population in Macedonia survive the war and nourish their cultural values one of the five pillars of Islam, a responsibility of Muslims to pay about 1/40 of their income yearly to support the poor chants of “remembrance” of God as basic form of worship at Sufi centers

NOTES

Prologue 1. It may appear that this refers to Armenians, but in 1870s in the Balkans, it referred to Bulgarians, whose sufferings in the events that led up to the RussoTurkish War of 1877– 8 were covered by the British press and especially Prime Minister Gladstone, while the subsequent sufferings of Muslim civilians were almost totally ignored. 2. Sinan Kuneralp (ed.), The Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy 1877–1880 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2009), p. 142. 3. Stanford Shaw and Ezel Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. II: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey, 1808– 1975 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 189. 4. Kuneralp, The Queen’s Ambassador, pp. 180– 1. 5. Justin McCarthy, Forced Migration and Mortality in the Ottoman Empire: An Annotated Map (Washington, DC: Turkish Coalition of American, 2010). 6. Bilal S¸ims¸ir, Rumeli’den Tu¨rk Go¨
leri: c Belgeler – Emigrations Turques des Balkans: Documents – Turkish Emigrations from the Balkans: Documents, Vol. I: A Turkish Exodus 1877–1878 (Ankara: Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨nu¨ Aras¸tırma Enstitu¨su¨, 1989). 7. Kuneralp, The Queen’s Ambassador, p. 233. 8. Ibid. 9. David Mitrany, The Effect of the War in Southeastern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936), pp. 252– 3. 10. See the shameful account of 12 to 14 million Germans, mostly women and children, expelled from Eastern Europe after World War II in R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012). 11. Frances Trix, The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology with University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

NOTES TO PAGES

XXI – 7

239

12. Her mention of becoming “a minority” refers to both loss of Ottoman political ¨ sku¨p in 1912. U¨sku¨p was the center power and loss of Ottoman population in U of the Ottoman vilayet until that time, and at least half Muslim. It was also the largest Albanian city in the Balkans. It is from her comment that I draw the heading of the chapter. I see this period as preparation for the community’s later working together in the new environment of Istanbul.

Introduction 1. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008; originally 1859). 2. Rene´e Hirschon, Heirs to the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus (New York: Berghahn Books, 1998). 3. See Mark Mazower’s Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430– 1950 (New York: Vintage Books, 2006) for a well-researched and well-written account of the Ladinos of Salonika. 4. See Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer’s Ghosts of Home: The Afterlife of Czernowitz in Jewish History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010) for a most compelling account of “heirloomers of empire.” 5. See Liisa Malkki, “Refugees and Exile: From Refugee Studies to the National Order of Things,” in William Durham, E. Valentine Daniel, and Bambi Schieffelin (eds), Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (New York: Annual Review, Inc., 1995), pp. 495– 523. 6. I presented in 2008 in San Francisco at the American Anthropological Association annual meeting on my research on the dernek, and have since found many more of these associations. As of 2012, I know of 62 in Istanbul alone. They also exist in Izmir, Bursa, Samsun, Ankara, and other cities where migrants from the Balkans, Crimea, or the Caucasus settled. 7. Peggy Levitt, “‘You Know, Abraham Was Really the First Immigrant’: Religion and Transnational Migration,” Migration Review 37/3, Transnational Migration: International Perspectives (Fall 2003), pp. 847– 73. 8. R. M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 18. 9. Ibid., p. 67. 10. David Mitrany, The Effect of the War in Southeastern Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1936), p. 252. See especially Appendix II. A.: “An Experiment in Nationalism: The Exchange of Minorities,” pp. 248 – 53. 11. Ibid., p. 253. 12. Bruce Clark, Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). This is a most readable book that explores the actual Lausanne agreement and experiences of both the Greek and Turkish sides, although there is so much more research done on the Greeks; it is difficult to be balanced.

240

NOTES

TO PAGES

7 –30

13. Bilal S¸ims¸ir, Rumeli’den Tu¨rk Go¨
leri: c Belgeler – Emigrations Turques des Balkans: Documents – Turkish Emigrations from the Balkans: Documents, 3 vols. (Ankara: Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨nu¨ Aras¸tırma Enstitu¨su¨, 1989; originally 1968, 1970, 1988). 14. Ibid., p. 11. ¨ sku¨p (“Our Back 15. Hidayet Ilimsever and H. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, Arka Bahcemiz U Gardens of Skopje”) (Istanbul: Bilgi, Ku¨ltu¨r, Sanat, 2010). 16. This is not at all a comprehensive history of the period. There are various histories of former Yugoslavia, including the interwar period and just after, by Barbara Jelavich (1983) and Robert Hayden (2010). I especially recommend the work by political philosopher Sabrina Ramet (2013, 2011). 17. See Natan P. F. Kellerman, “The Long-term Psychological Effects and Treatment of Holocaust Trauma,” in Transgenerational Transmission of Holocaust Trauma: A Review of the Research Literature (2000). Manuscript submitted for publication. 18. The biography of my longtime teacher in Frances Trix, The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb (2009) tells of this experience with the Albanian Bektashi community outside Detroit.

Chapter 1

The Sultan’s Last Visit to Rumeli

1. Leon Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica: City at the Crossroads (London: Haus Books, 2007), pp. 198– 9. 2. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, p. 222. 3. Halide Edib, House with Wisteria: Memoirs of Turkey Old and New (London: Transaction Publishers, 2009; original publication 1926), p. 212. 4. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, p. 277. 5. Mevlu¨t C¸elebi, Sultan Res¸ad’ın Rumeli seyahati (“Sultan Res¸ad’s Rumeli Journey”) (Izmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 1999), p. 18. 6. Ibid., p. 4. 7. Mevlu¨t C¸elebi’s work (1999) is the best account I have found of this remarkable event. However, Albanian sources do have different views of the event. 8. Sciaky, Farewell to Salonica, p. 223. 9. Ibid., p. 18. 10. Ibid., p. 28. 11. Ibid., p. 291. 12. See Mark Mazower’s Salonica, City of Ghosts. 13. The Mevlevi are known colloquially in the West as the “whirling dervishes” for their distinctive form of zikr, or “remembrance,” in praise of God in which they pivot gracefully around the left foot with one arm raised towards God and the other outstretched. Their founder is the well-known thirteenth-century poet, Jalaleddin Rumi, a forced migrant whose family had fled the Mongols from their home in central Asia and had traveled across Iran, Iraq, and Syria, finally taking refuge in Konya in Anatolia. 14. Ibid., p. 39.

NOTES

TO PAGES

31 – 45

241

15. Notes on Sultan Resad’s Rumeli Seyahati available at http://www.saidnur.com/ foreign/en/risaleler/tarihce/1chap6.html. ¨ sku¨p’te Imar Faaliyetleri,” Gamer 16. Mu¨cize U¨nlu¨, “II. Abdu¨lhamit Do¨neminde U I/1 (2012), pp. 177– 8. 17. Noel Malcolm, Kosova: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 244. 18. C¸elebi, Sultan Res¸ad’ın Rumeli seyahati, p. 50. 19. Ibid., p. 89. 20. Ibid., p. 90. 21. Citations in the newspapers Senin and Rumeli from 28 June 1911 in C¸elebi, p. 90. 22. Oral account by Nafia Bilge of Izmir and Monastir, cited in C¸elebi, p. 76. 23. Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, With the Turks in Thrace (London: William Heinemann, 1913), pp. 50 – 8. 24. See Frances Trix, “Peace-Mongering in 1913: The Carnegie International Commission of Inquiry and Its Report on the Balkan Wars,” Journal of First World War Studies 5/2 (July 2014), pp. 147– 62. 25. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars, Division of Intercourse and Education, publication no. 4 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1914). 26. Pierre Loti, La Turquie Agonisante (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1925; 1913), pp. 88–90. 27. Mazower, Mark, “The Muslim Exodus from Salonika, 1912 –1924” (2006) [Network54]. Available at http://www.network54.com/Forum/231937/thread/ 1137759603/last-1138097518/Theþ MuslimþExodusþfromþSalonika% 2Cþ1912-1924 (accessed 31 December 2015). 28. Bejtullah Destani (ed.), Ethnic Minorities in the Balkan States 1860– 1971, Vol. 2 (London: Archive Editions, 2003), on anti-Semitism of Greeks in Salonika. 29. Leon Trotsky, The War Correspondence of Leon Trotsky: The Balkan Wars of 1912– 1913. (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1980), pp. 329 – 30. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., p. 333. 32. Ibid., p. 334. 33. [FO 224/235] Sir Edward Grey to Sir R. Rodd, 19 November 1912. 34. [FO 421/235] Sir Ralph Paget (Ambassador) to Sir Edward Grey, Belgrade, 21 November 1912. 35. See Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). I thank Margaret Mills for this reference. 36. Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 253 – 4. 37. Ibid., pp. 254 – 5. 38. [FO 371/1782] Vice-Consul Grieg to Constantinople Ambassador Gerald Lowther, Monastir, 21 January 1913.

242

NOTES

TO PAGES

48 –72

¨ sku¨p (Skopje) Chapter 2 The Home City of U between the World Wars 1. Interview in the home of Mukaddes Hanım, Istanbul, 14 March 2008. 2. A tekke is a sort of “Muslim monastery.” The Rufai Order, also known as Rifai, is one of the main Sufi, or mystic orders of Islam. It traces its origins to twelfthcentury Iraq. Today it has centers in Turkey, the Balkans, the Middle East, and North America. 3. In contrast to the experience of Jews in Macedonia is the experience of Jews in neighboring Albania. Albania was the only country in Europe with more Jews at the end of World War II than at the beginning. Albanian families took in Jews and refused to give them up, building on their powerful understanding of the sacredness of the guest. Most of these families were Muslim families and they stood up to increasingly violent German demands. See Norman Gershman, Besa: Muslims Who Saved Jews in World War II (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008). 4. Reported to me by Prof. Aleksandar Sterjovski, 13 April 2014, when I was in Bitola (Monastir) for five weeks. He showed me the house of the Albanian consul and the home of the Jewish family of Jacques Nahmias, the one Jewish boy saved. 5. Jamila Andjela Kolonomos, Monastir Without Jews: Recollections of Jewish Partisan in Macedonia (Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies, 2008). 6. Sandy Tolan, The Lemon Tree (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006), p. 42. 7. Hasan Yelmen, Bir O¨mru¨ Deriyorum (“A Life I Live in Leather”) (Istanbul: Mavi Ofset, 2009). 8. Suraiya Faroqhi.“‘Sainthood as Means of Self-Defense in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Anatolia,” in Grace Martin and C. Ernst (eds), Manifestations of Sainthood in Islam (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1993), pp. 193 –208. ¨ sku¨p (“Our Back 9. Hidayet Ilimsever and H. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, Arka Bahcemiz U Gardens of Skopje”) (Istanbul: Bilgi, Ku¨ltu¨r, Sanat, 2010), p. 121. 10. Ibid., p. 122. 11. Ibid., p. 117. 12. Bejtullah Destani (ed.), Ethnic Minorities in the Balkan States 1860– 1971, Vol. 2: 1888– 1914 (London: Archive Editions) [FO 294/51], p. 447, from Vice-Consul Greig, Monastir, to Crackenthorpe, Belgrade, 17 March 1914. 13. Burcu Ellis, Shadow Genealogies: Memory and Identity among Urban Muslims in Macedonia (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003), p. 98. 14. Ibid., pp. 96 – 9 (see photographs). 15. Ibid., p. 71. 16. Ibid., p. 69. 17. These descriptions are my translations from Turkish of the more detailed descriptions of wedding customs in the Turkish community in Skopje of the interwar period in Hidayet Hanım’s book. See Ilimsever, pp. 57 – 83.

NOTES

TO PAGES

73 –87

243

Chapter 3 Three Strikes: World War II, State Terrorism, and Communism 1. Kemal Kiris¸
ci, “Refugees of Turkish Origin: ‘Coerced Immigrants’ to Turkey since 1945,” International Migration 34 (1996), p. 388. 2. Notice his use of the term “Arnauts,” the Ottoman term for Albanians, which makes them seem more foreign, instead of the more neutral “Albanski.” 3. Vaso Cˇubrilovic´, “The Expulsion of the Arnauts” – Memorandum, translated from Serbo-Croatian by Robert Elsie, from Iseljavanje Arnauta. Manuscript in the Institute of Military History of the Yugoslav People’s Army (Vojno Istorijski Institut JNA). Archives of the former Yugoslav Army (Arhiv Bivsˇe Jugoslovenske Vojske), Belgrade, 7 March 1937, No. 2, Fasc. 4, Box 69, 19 pp. Available at http://www.albanianhistory.net/texts20_2/AH1937_1.html. 4. Bejtuallah Destani, Ethnic Minorities in the Balkan States 1860– 1971. London: Archive Editions [FO 294/51], p. 462, from Vice-Consul Greig, Monastir, Sept 9, 1913, to Sir Marling, Charge d’Affairs, Constantinople. 5. Ibid. 6. Interview with Niyazi Bey, 11 March 2008, Bes¸iktas¸, Istanbul. 7. Frances Trix, “Ethnic Minorities of Macedonia: Turks, Roma, and Serbs,” in Sabrina Rama (ed.), Civic and Uncivic Values in Macedonia: Value Transformation, Education, Media (New York: Palgrave, 2013), p. 197. 8. H. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, Yu¨cel Tes¸kilatı (Istanbul: S¸ahinler Matbaacılık, 2006), p. 32. 9. Most of the information on the Yu¨cel Organization comes from talking to historian Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, from members of the Rumeli Dernek, and from the series of pamplets that Ag˘anog˘lu has written on the Yu¨cel Tes¸kilati. 10. Ibid. 11. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, Yu¨
el c Tes¸kilatı, II. Du¨nya Savas¸ında Yugoslavya’da Bir Direnis¸ Mu¨cadelesi (“The Yucel Organization, A Resistance Struggle in Yugoslavia in the Second World War”) (Istanbul: Sedef Matbaacılık, 2012), p. 7. 12. I have been informed that there are Yugoslav State Security records that attest that the Yu¨cel members’ intent was secession and that they had weapons. Certainly this claim was to justify their execution. However, I find this claim deeply implausible. Ino¨nu¨ would have had no interest in such a group, and as for the allegation that they had weapons – that is what Yugoslav State Security had claimed of all minority groups in former Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1999. I worked with refugees in the 1990s from Bosnia and Kosova. The search for weapons was always an excuse to go after civilians, to terrorize them and to destroy the inside of their homes. 13. “Sehidimin Mezarını Go¨stersinler Yeter” (“It is Enough that They Show Me My Martyr’s Grave”), Aksion Dergisi, 9 February 2004, p. 47. 14. Risto Stefanoski, Tu¨rk Tiyatrosu Monographi (U¨skup: Kalegrafik DOO, 2009), p. 7.

244

NOTES

TO PAGES

87 –111

15. Ibid., p. 8. 16. Ibid., p. 11. 17. The Yo¨ru¨k are a tribal Turkic people who were exiled from Anatolia to the Balkans in the fifteenth century. There used to be many Yo¨ru¨k villages in eastern Macedonia but most emigrated after World War II. 18. Ag˘anog˘lu, U¨sku¨p Kitabı, pp. 121– 2. 19. Stefanoski, Tu¨rk Tiyatrosu Monographi, p. 18. 20. This is a common comment of the migrants. Historically Rankovic´, who was minister of the interior and chief of military intelligence after World War II until 1966, was a Serbian communist leader who was politically interested in maintaining centralized power in Belgrade, rather than in the separate republics. He ran Kosova as a police state. At his trial in 1966 it came out that people under him had committed abuses without his approval, but all was attributed to him.

Part II

Taking the Plunge to a New Homeland

1. Vaso Cˇubrilovic´, 1944, “The Minority Problem in the New Yugoslavia: Memorandum” (“Manjinski problem u novoj Jugoslaviji”), translated by Robert Elsie, in Robert Elsie, Texts and Documents of Albanian History, 1920– 1944, available at http://www.albanianhistory.net/. 2. I translated the poem “Bir Ko¨fer Bir Sandık” (“One Suitcase, One Trunk”) by Zeynel Beksac
from the Turkish on the website of the Kosova Prizrenliler Ku¨ltu¨r ve Dayanıs¸ma Derneg˘i.

Chapter 4

The Imperial City of Istanbul in a Downward Doze

1. A. Henry Layard, Ambassador, Constantinople, 16 January 1878 dispatch to Lord Derby, cited in Sinan Kuneralp, Queen’s Ambassador to the Sultan: Memoirs of Sir Henry A. Layard’s Constantinople Embassy 1877–1880 (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2009), p. 233. 2. Bilal S¸ims¸ir, Rumeli’den Tu¨rk Go¨
cleri: Belgeler – Emigrations Turques des Balkans: Documents – Turkish Emigrations from the Balkans: Documents, Vol. I: A Turkish Exodus 1877 – 1878 (Ankara: Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨ru¨nu¨ Aras¸tırma Enstitu¨su¨, 1989). See hand-drawn illustrations at the end of the volume after p. 744 for examples of scenes of refugees arriving on train cars in Constantinople. 3. For careful descriptions of designs of the Church/Monastery of St. Savior of Chora, and of the materials, see Robert Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2008), especially chapters four and five. 4. Nurhan Atasoy and Lale Uluc
, Impressions of Ottoman Culture in Europe: 1453– 1699 (Istanbul: Armaggan Publications, 2012), p. 159. 5. Ibid.

NOTES TO PAGES 111 –125

245

6. Ibid., p. 165. 7. Ibid., p. 167. 8. Ara Gu¨ler’s Istanbul (London: Thames & Hudson, 2009). This is a truly remarkable book of black-and-white photographs of Istanbul by photographer Ara Gu¨ler that show the people of the city from 1940 to 1980, with special focus on the 1950s and 1960s. It is thus especially valuable for understanding what the migrants from the Balkans encountered when they came to Istanbul. Gu¨ler is interested in poorer sections of Istanbul where the migrants lived and worked. He is a true artist. 9. Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul: Memories and the City (“Istanbul: Hatıralar ve S¸ehir”) (New York: Vintage International, 2003). When I read this book I got a very different view of Istanbul. Pamuk’s is a valuable contrast with the culture of the migrants from Skopje. 10. I draw much of this information on Evliya C¸elebi from Robert Dankoff’s book An Ottoman Mentality: The World of Evliya Chelebi (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 11. This is drawn from the book by Alexander Pallis, In the Days of the Janissaries: Old Turkish Life as Depicted in the “Travel-book” of Evliya Chelebi (London: Hutchinson, 1951), especially pp. 222– 4. 12. Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream: The History of the Ottoman Empire (New York: Basic Books, 2005), p. 291. 13. Yıldırım Ag˘anog˘lu, Uskup Kitabi (“The Book of Skopje”) (Istanbul: Fide Yayınları, 2008), p. 113. 14. Finkel, Osman’s Dream, p. 350. 15. Ibid., pp. 350 – 1. 16. Ibid., p. 7. 17. Abdu¨lmennan Altınas¸, “The World of Ottoman Guilds: The Issue of Monopoly,” International Journal of History Studies 2/3 (2010), p. 13. 18. See Ahmet Kal’a, Istanbul Esnaf Birlikleri ve Nizamları (“Istanbul Union of Tradesmen and Ordinances”) (Istanbul: Istanbul Aras¸tırmaları Merkezi, 1998), for full discussion. 19. Ibid., p. 15. 20. C¸elik Gu¨lersoy, Story of the Covered Bazaar (Istanbul: Istanbul Kitaplıg˘ı, 1990), pp. 36 – 7. 21. Ibid., p. 12. 22. Ibid., p. 13. 23. Ibid., p. 43. 24. Irfan Orga, Portrait of a Turkish Family, 1950 (London: Elland in association with Galeri Kayseri, Istanbul, 1988). 25. Nur Bilge Criss, Istanbul Under Allied Occupation, 1918– 1923 (Leiden: Brill, 1999), p. 27. 26. See section on Le Corbusier in Esra Akcan, “Nomads and Migrants: A Comparative Reading of Le Corbusier and Sedad Eldem’s Travel Diaries,”, 2009, p. 92. 27. Solita Solano, “Constantinople Today,” National Geographic Magazine XLI (6 June 1922), p. 647, cited in Criss, Istanbul, p. 28.

246

NOTES TO PAGES 127 –145

Chapter 5 The Hometown Association in Istanbul in the Early Years 1. Visit to Kosova Ku¨ltu¨r ve Dayanıs¸ma Derneg˘i, Aksaray, Istanbul, 15 October 2007 and interview with most perceptive Rumeli engineer. 2. Vardarlılar Yardımlas¸ma Kurulu Nizamnamesi (“The Regulation of the Foundation for Assistance to the People of the Vardar”), no author, no date listed, in the Archives of the Rumeli Tu¨rkleri Ku¨ltu¨r ve Dayanıs¸ma Derneg˘i, Fındıkzade, Istanbul, Turkey. 3. “Let us Clothe the Orphan and Poor Students for the Holiday,” Vardarlılar Buletini 1, February 1962, p. 1. 4. Hannah Kliger (ed.), Jewish Hometown Associations and Family Circles in New York: The WPA Yiddish Writers’ Group Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 5. The Sinani are a Sufi, or Muslim mystic, order that is a branch of the larger Halveti Order. The center of the Halveti Order in the Balkans is Prizren in Kosova. As for the Sinani, in U¨sku¨p they were a smaller tekke, or Sufi center. 6. Istanbul Go¨
cmenlere Yardım Derneg˘i Yayınları, Dernek Merkez Yo¨netim Kurulunun Go¨
menlerin c Yerles¸tirilmesi hususundaki Du¨s¸u¨nce ve Dilekleri (“Thoughts and Proposals of the Central Executive Committee of the Association for Settling Migrants”) (Istanbul: Bu¨rhaneddin Erenler Matbaası, 1951). 7. Ibid., p. 1. 8. Mary Neuburger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). p. 69. 9. Fahri Kaya, Gu¨n Bugu¨n (“A Day Today”) (U¨sku¨p: Yeni Balkan Yayınevi, 2009), p. 311. What is especially interesting about this quotation is that Fahri Kaya himself did not emigrate to Turkey, although much of his family did. 10. “Journalists were taken around an immigrant neighborhood today,” Cumhurriyet, 5 February 1955, p. 1. 11. Quote from Turkish student on train from Macedonia, cited in “S¸ehir Haberleri” (“City News”), Cumhurriyet, 9 April 1955, p. 2. 12. “In Istanbul and Izmir Martial Law has been Declared,” Cumhurriyet, 7 September 1955, p. 1. 13. The following account by Muhterrem Hanım is based on oral interviews with her in Turkish in her home in Fatih, Istanbul, 29 February 2008. ¨ kten, Angry Nation: Turkey since 1989 (London: Zed Publishing, 2011), 14. Kerem O p. 45. 15. Ibid. 16. Ilimsever and Ag˘anog˘lu, Arka Bahcemiz U¨sku¨p, pp. 129 – 30. Hidayet Hanim also told me of this time in Istanbul in person. 17. Ibid., p. 130.

NOTES

TO PAGES

145 –157

247

18. The most famous and thorough of the Greek sources on the events of 6 –7 September 1955 is by Speros Vryonis, The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom Of September 6 – 7, 1955, And The Destruction Of The Greek Community Of Istanbul (New York: Greekworks, 2005). 19. In 2001 Christian Macedonians burned Muslims’ homes and businesses in Bitola in southern Macedonia in revenge for the killing of seven Macedonian soldiers by Albanians in northern Macedonia. There was no connection of the actions besides ethnic hatred. The police helped by giving the mob the addresses of Muslims. 20. I visited Ismail O¨zkilic
several times in 2007 and 2008. This interview took place in the Kosova Prizrenliler Derneg˘i in Aksaray on 18 March 2008. 21. This is from the second interview with Mukaddes Atlı in her home in Fatih, 4 April 2008. 22. Recall that the Sultan Murat Mosque is a major mosque in Skopje. 23. Mount Vodna is a mountain on the south side of Skopje. 24. Gazibaba is a district of Skopje north of the Vardar on the east side. The name comes from Turkish and means “Warrior Father,” or “War Veteran Father.” It was a nickname for the Ottoman poet As¸ık C¸elebi. 25. “Rumeli Tu¨rkleri Ku¨ltu¨r ve Dayanıs¸ma Derneg˘inin Tarihi Kongresi” (“The Historical Congress of the Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Dernek”), Rumeli ve Anadolu Postalari: Siyasi-Iktisadi Mu¨stakil Gazete (“Rumeli and Anatolian Mail: Political and Economic Independent Newspapers”) (editor and founder S¸aban Kılıc
, founded in 1951), 66/5 (1966), pp. 1 & 4.

Chapter 6 The Rumeli Turks Mature in a Time of Coups 1. “Ku¨c
u¨k Kurulus¸un Bu¨yu¨k Is¸leri” (“A Small Foundation’s Substantial Accomplishments”), Rumeliler Bu¨lteni, February 1972, p. 1. 2. “Rumeli’de Tu¨rk Ku¨ltu¨r” (“Turkish Culture in Rumeli”), Rumeliler Bu¨lteni, December 1970, p. 1. 3. Ibid. 4. See the following city history of Prizren for accounts of how several of its mosques were misused to store armaments: Nafis Lokvica and Edis Potori, Prizren: Kryeqyteti i Kultures ¼ Capital of Cultures ¼ Bir Ku¨ltu¨r Bas¸kenti ¼ Glavni Grad Kulture (Prizren: Siprint, 2011). 5. O¨yku¨ Potuog˘lu-Cook, “Beyond the Glitter: Belly Dance and Neoliberal Gentrification in Istanbul,” Cultural Anthropology 21/4 (2006), p. 634. 6. Obviously these sociologists confuse Christian practices with Islam. See Marco Giugni, Noe´mi Michel, and Matteo Gianni, “Associational Involvement, Social Capital and the Political Participation of Ethno-Religious Minorities: The Case of Muslims in Switzerland,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40/10 (January 2014), pp. 1– 21. 7. Duahan Hafıf Adem Erim, “Islamda Birlik,” Rumeliler Bu¨lteni, December 1970, pp. 4 – 6.

248

NOTES

TO PAGES

157 –181

8. Duahan Hafız Adem Erim, “Islamın Yardımın Onemi,” Rumeli Bu¨lteni, February 1972, p. 2. 9. Duahan Hafız Adem Erim, “Islam S¸artlarına bir Bakıs¸ ve Kurban Bayramı,” Rumeliler Bu¨lteni, November 1975, pp. 1 – 2. 10. Recall that skilled leather-workers were founding members of the association. 11. The book was Eric
’s beloved classical Turkish songs and modes, entitled Tu¨rk Sanat Mu¨zig˘inde Bir O¨mu¨r: Udi Bestekaˆr Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
’in Eserleri. Translated, this means, “A Life in Classical Turkish Music: The Works of Oud-Player Composer Ru¨s¸tu¨ Eric
.” It was published in 2001 in Istanbul. 12. See Walter Feldman, Music of the Ottoman Court: Makam, Composition and the Early Ottoman Instrumental Repertoire, Intercultural Music Studies, 10 (Berlin: Verlag fu¨r Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1996). 13. Ibid., p. 16. 14. Interview with Refik Bey in Turkish, 8 May 2008, on Lake Ohrid ferryboat, Macedonia. 15. Rifat Emin Sipahi, I˙lhami Emin’in Anıları Balkanlar ve Tu¨rkler (“Ilhami Emin’s Memoirs: Balkans and Turks”). The most relevant short article in this collection of articles is: “Go¨
c Edenler ve Kalanlar” (“Those who migrated and those who stayed”) (Istanbul: Mitos, 2011), pp. 231– 2. 16. Ibid., p. 231. 17. Sheykh Muhammed Nur al-Arabi was charismatic, and some came to see him as a saint of his times. In addition, the Melami Order became involved politically at the end of the Ottoman Empire. See Abdu¨lbaki Go¨lpınarlı, Melamiler ve Melamilik (Istanbul, 1931), 232– 52. 18. Ritual washing. 19. See Jenny White’s Islamic Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002). 20. This is from UN statistics of the TFR, or total fertility rate, in World Population Prospects, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Demographics of Turkey, 2010. 21. Erik J. Zu¨rcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B.Tauris, 2007), p. 229. 22. Andrew Mango, The Turks Today (London: John Murray, 2004), p. 52. 23. Ibid., p. 68. 24. Zu¨rcher, Turkey, p. 263. 25. Ibid. 26. Mango, The Tu¨rks Today, p. 80. 27. Fieldwork conducted in August 2008 at the Dernek Center, Fındıkzade. 28. These comments are from interviews at the Dernek Center in December 2012.

Chapter 7 The Rumeli Turks Association Reaches Out 1. Hale Borak Boratov, “Searching for Feminism in Psychology in Turkey,” in A. Rutherford et al. (eds), Handbook of International Feminisms, International and Cultural Psychology (New York: Springer, 1994), p. 31.

NOTES

TO PAGES

182 –200

249

2. Tu¨lay Aras, “Kadınlar kolu” (“The Women’s Branch”), Rumeli’nin Sesi (“The Voice of Rumeli”) 2 (1995), p. 14. 3. Tu¨lay Aras, “Kadınlar Komisyonu” (“The Women’s Commission”), Rumeli’nin Sesi (“The Voice of Rumeli”) 3 (1996), p. 18. 4. “Deg˘erleri U¨yelerimiz” (“Dear Members”), Haber Bu¨lteni Vardar, March 1994, p. 14. 5. “Yaptıg˘ımız hizmetler” (“The Assistance We Gave”), Rumeli’nin Sesi, February 1995, p. 12. 6. “1996 yılı faaliyet raporu” (“The Activity Report for the Year 1996”), Rumeli’nin Sesi, December 1996, p. 16. 7. Alan Cowell, “Turkey faces Moral Crisis over Bosnia,” New York Times, 11 July 1992. 8. Richard J. Aldrich, “America Used Islamists to Arm the Bosnian Muslims,” The Guardian, 21 April 2002. 9. These included: the Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Dernek, the Prilep Culture and Support Dernek, the Kirc
ova Family Culture and Support Dernek, the All Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Dernek, the Monastir Folklore Research Dernek, the Kalkandelen Culture and Support Dernek, the Is¸tip Social and Support Dernek, and the People of Gostivar Culture and Support Dernek. 10. H. Yıldırim Ag˘anog˘lu, “Yeniden Dog˘us¸” (“Born Anew”), Rumeli’nin Sesi, December 1996, pp. 8 – 9. 11. The Bolluca Mosque Project would not be complete until 2002. But as Kenan Bey noted in his dedication address, it is necessary to work cooperatively with mayors in these projects. That it was completed was largely thanks to Kenan Bey, it appears. See “Bolluca Camii ibadete ac
ıldı,” Yeni Go¨zde, April 2002, p. 32. 12. See my article on the situation in Kosova at this time: Frances Trix, “Kosovar Albanians between a Rock and a Hard Place,” in Sabrina P. Ramet and Vjeran Pavlakovic (eds), Serbia Since 1989: Politics And Society Under Milosevic And After (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), pp. 309 – 49. 13. Lu¨tfu¨ Tu¨rkhan, “Kosova’da Sırp Vahs¸etini Durduralım!”, 7 March 1998. 14. O¨mer Bo¨lu¨kbas¸ı, “Bursiyerlerimiz ile hayirseverlerimiz arasındaki ko¨pru¨” (“The Bridge between Those of Us Who Have Won Scholarships and Our Good Deeds”), Rumeli’nin Sesi, January 2009, p. 35. 15. The most comprehensive biography of Atatu¨rk is Andrew Mango’s Atatu¨rk (London: John Murray, 1999). 16. See Carolyn Psenka, Frances Trix, and Allen Batteau, Close Call Data Sources: Review and Analysis. For John F. Kennedy Space Center, NASA, 2001. Award Number: NAG10-279 (76 pp.). 17. See Frances Trix, Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology with University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), pp. 188–90. 18. I refer here to Walter G. Andrews. He has written several books on Turkish and Ottoman poetry. Among them are: Poetry’s Voice, Society’s Song (University of

250

19. 20.

21.

22.

NOTES TO PAGES 200 –227 Washington Press, 1985); An Introduction to Ottoman Poetry, Ottoman Lyric Poetry (University of Washington Press, 2007); and The Age of the Beloveds (Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2005). I worked very hard on this translation. It does not do justice to the original. Bursa was the first capital of the Ottoman Empire. It is in Anatolia to the east of the Sea of Marmara on the side of Uludag˘, known also as Mount Olympus. It is a city of Ottoman mosques and tombs of Ottoman sultans. It has a similar feel to U¨sku¨p with Mount Vodno to the south, part of the S¸ar mountains. Interestingly, half the population of Bursa today has Balkan roots. ¨ zer, “U¨sku¨p’te Tu¨rk Milliyetc
ilik Harekatı Yu¨cel Tes¸kilatı Olayı” Refiz O (“Turkish Nationalist Action in Skopje: the Yu¨cel Organization Event”), Rumeli Tu¨rkler Haber Bu¨lteni Vardar, March 1994, p. 8. “Bas¸ka Bir Tepeden,” from Aziz Istanbul by Yahya Kemal. I did this translation.

Chapter 8 The Rumeli Dernek Deepens 1. Refik O¨zer, Rumeli Tu¨rkler Haber Bu¨lteni Vardar, March 1994, pp. 8 – 9. 2. Ibid., p. 13; continued in Rumeli’nin Sesi, February 1995, pp. 17 – 18. 3. The photograph of the original Ottoman on the chocolate wrapper, along with the text of the message, is found in Yıldırım Ag˘anolu, Yu¨cel Tes¸kilatı (Sedef Matbaacılık: Istanbul, 2012), pp. 42–3. 4. Ibid., footnote 17, p. 42. 5. “Yu¨cel Martyrs 30th Anniversary,” Rumeliler Bu¨lteni, August 1978, p. 6. 6. Ibid. 7. Emin Akdag˘ and Has¸im So¨ylemez, “Yu¨celci Tu¨rkler,” Aksiyon, February 2004, p. 47. 8. See Natan P. F. Kellerman, “The Long-term Psychological Effects and Treatment of Holocaust Trauma,” in Transgenerational Transmission of Holocaust Trauma: A Review of the Research Literature (2000). Manuscript submitted for publication. 9. Anthropologist Roy Rappaport’s famous definition of ritual has been expanded to: “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers logically entails the establishment of convention, the sealing of social contract, the construction of the integrated conventional orders we shall call Logoi . . . the investment of whatever it encodes with morality, the construction of time and eternity; the representation of a paradigm of creation, the generation of the concept of the sacred and the sanctification of conventional order, the generation of theories of the occult, the evocation of numinous experience, the awareness of the divine, the grasp of the holy, and the construction of orders of meaning transcending the semantic.” Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

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INDEX

6– 7 September 1955, events of, 139 – 40, 142, 145– 6 Abdu¨lhamid II, 21, 22–4, 28, 122 Abla, Hacer, 16 – 17, 17, 86– 8, 204, 217 – 27 Adem, Adem Ali, 83, 90 Adil Bey, 196 Ag˘anog˘lu, Yıldırım, 8, 12– 13, 212 – 15, 220 – 1, 230– 1 Albanians, 25, 30, 31, 32, 34 Ali, Ali Abdurrahman, 83 al-Andalus, 5 andartes, 22 anti-Muslim decrees, 84– 5 Armenians, 24, 123, 144 Aruc i, Kemal, 171 – 2, 173 Aruc i, Dr. Muhammad, 173 Atatu¨rk, Mustafa Kemal, 17, 122– 6, 147, 155, 161, 195, 229 reforms of, 158, 181 Baghdat Kiosk, Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, 114 – 15 Balkan Alliance, 39 Barbaros, Hayreddin, 27 Baykal, Hu¨seyin, 147 bedistans, 120 Bektac , Zeynel, 99

Birlik, newspaper, 83, 171 Bosnians, 89, 189 British, 125– 6 Bukagili, Hu¨dai, 131, 135, 136 Bulgarians, 56 –7, 76, 81, 132 caravanserais, 53 – 4 C¸avus¸og˘lu, Dr. Muzaffer, 194 C¸elebi, Evliya, 115 – 18, 121 C¸elebi, Mevlu¨t, 26 Cemiyet, political party, 67 Cenab-i Hakk, 27 Christian – Muslim relations, 58 – 9, 67, 124, 170 – 1, 173, 206 circumcision, 68, 129 – 30 classical Turkish music, see music Committee for Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti), 22– 3, 27 Communist Party of Macedonia, 84 – 5, 149, 169 Constantinople 1, 5, 107, 109; see also Istanbul constitutions Ottoman, 21, 23 Yugoslav, 167 Covered Bazaar, Istanbul, 63, 110, 120–2, 131, 136 Cˇubrilovic´, Vaso, 74 –5, 97

INDEX Cumhuriyet, newspaper, 138 Czernowitz, 5 “deep state”, of Turkey, 142 Demirel, Su¨leyman, 175, 179, 182 dernek, 6, 179 dialect, Rumelian Turkish, 127, 150, 161, 228 Dolmabahce Palace, 27, 38 Ecevit, Bu¨lent, 175 Elveda Rumeli, TV program, 94 Emel Hanım (Salihog˘lu), 225, 231 Emin, lhami, 167 – 70 Eric , Ru¨s¸tu¨, 162 – 4 Eris¸, Mualla, 184 Ersoy, Mehmet Akıf, 195 –6 evlad-i fatihan, 4, 39, 59 Evren, General Kenan, 178– 9 expelling minorities, international practice of, 7, 8 “Expulsion of the Arnauts” (Cˇubrilovic´), 74 – 5 fatiha, 222 Fındıkzade, Istanbul, 12, 165 First Balkan War, 27 flowers and Ottoman gardens, 111–12 forced migrants, 2, 6, 133– 4 Free Migration Act, 86 Gallipoli, 122, 195 generosity, 229, 234 Germany, 122, 149 Golden Horn, 107 Grand Bazaar, see Covered Bazaar Greeks, 123 –4 guilds, 32, 53, 55, 116, 120, 190, 228 Gu¨ler, Ara, 115 hafız, 116, 162 Hagia Sofia, cathedral, 107, 109 Hakimog˘lu, Kemal, 89, 234 “heirs of the lost realm,” 4 – 5, 156

263

helva, 19, 224 Hidayet Hanım, see Ilimsever, Hidayet Hirschon, Rene´e, 3– 4 Holy Savior in Chora, Istanbul (Kariye Camii), 107, 108, 109 ilahis, 202 Ilimsever, Hidayet, 8– 9, 15, 17, 18, 48, 144 Immigrant and Refugee Associations Federation, Istanbul, 136 international aid, 230 Isakovic´, Isa Bey, 50 Ishak, S¸uayb Aziz, 83, 91, 214 Ishak Bey Mosque, Skopje, 50 Islam, 6, 149, 157 –8, 211 central to migrants and their identity, 156, 159, 229 using spirit of Ramadan to help others, 234 Istanbul, see also Constantinople, 1, 103–5, 125, 126, 137 – 8 foreign occupation of, 122, 123, 125 quarters of and food in, 116 – 18 at the time of migration in 1953, 102, 137 Istiklal March, national anthem, 220 Italians, 76 Itri, 165 Jews, 5, 21, 27– 8, 35, 42, 51, 57– 8, 116 Kaya, Fahri, 134, 171 Kemal, Yahya, 115, 164, 196 – 7, 201 Keskinis, Nurettin, 135 komitajis, 21, 22 Kosova/Kosovo, 18, 190, 192 Kosova Association, 127 Kumkapı, Istanbul 144 landsmanshaftn, 6 Layard, Austen Henry, 105

264

URBAN MUSLIM MIGRANTS IN ISTANBUL

Le Corbusier, 103 leather production, 59, 61, 62 Legis, 233 Liman, Nezih, 98 loss experienced by migrants, 6, 13, 58, 85, 92, 137, 149, 198, 200, 217, 219 dealing with loss, 201, 202 Macedonia, 207, 221 Manzikert, Battle of, 109 marriage, Rumeli customs of, 70– 2 McCarthy, Justin, 6 Mehmed II (Fatih Mehmet), 109 Melami, Sufi order 164, 169 Menderes, Adnan, 133, 139, 141, 145, 174 methodology of research, 11 Mevlevi, Sufi order, 29, 31, 42, 50, 158 mevlid/mevlud, 157, 203, 212, 217, 221 – 2, 226 migrant association, bulletins, 147– 8, 153, 157, 182 Mihailovic´, General Dragoljub, 91 minority, of Muslims in Balkans, 46, 145, 228 Monastir/Bitola, Macedonia, 36, 37, 44 Muhabbet Hanım, 64– 5 muhajir, 127 muhajir mahallesi, 90 Muhterem Hanım (Tahtais¸leyen), 140 – 1, 171, 224 Mukaddes Hanım (Atlı), 48, 76– 81, 149 Murat I, 33 music, 159, 161 classical Turkish music, 163– 4 music program of Rumeli Association, 153, 160–2, 166–7 National Minorities Theater, 86– 9 NATO, 136

Necati Bey (Aydınog˘lu), 54 –6, 58– 9, 162 neo-Ottomania, 156 news, related to migrants in Turkish press, 139 Niyazi Bey, Major, 23, 29, 36 “One Suitcase, One Trunk,” re-enactment, 98 – 101 Orga, Irfan, 124 –5 Orient Express, 106 Ottoman Empire heritage, 3 – 5, 156 – 7, 228 military, 109, 118 – 19, 122 – 3 O¨zer, Refik, 201 – 5, 211 – 12, 216–17 O¨zkilic , Ismail, 148 Pamuk, Orhan, 115 poetry, 165, 172 – 3, 180, 196 – 202 Post, Hafız, 164 Prishtina, Kosova, 32, 44, 75 Rankovic´, Alexandar, 96, 170 Rauf, Abdu¨lfettah, 172 – 3 Redzepi, Jasmin, 233 refugees from Balkan Wars, 44, 45 Roma/gypsies, 58 Rumeli Turks Culture and Mutual Support Association (Rumeli Tu¨rkleri Ku¨ltu¨r ve Dayanıs¸ma Derneg˘i), 15, 150, 154, 189; see also dernek activities of, 93 – 6, 202, 212 aid work of, 183 – 7, 190 – 4, 229 bylaws of, 128 compared to international aid, 230 name change of, 151 – 2, 154, 155 relation to Turkish politics 176– 8 Rumeli Vakfı, 189, 191, 219 Res¸ad V, 25– 44, 49 – 51, 122 Russo-Turkish War of 1877– 8, 22, 35, 90

INDEX Sacrifice Holiday, 157, 158, 230 S¸ahinler, Kenan, 190 Salonika, Rumeli, 5, 21, 27, 28, 41 Second Balkan War, 40 serbest go¨men, c 132, 133 Serbians, 32, 35, 67 Sesler, journal, 170, 171 Sevdiye Hanım, 65 – 6 Seyahatname (Evliya C¸elebi) 115– 18 Sezen, Dr. Erdem, 147, 148, 151 silence, regarding expulsion of Muslims from southeast Europe, 6, 7, 13, 14, 230, 231 simit pogaca, 18, 220, 225 S¸ims¸ir, Bilal, 7 – 8 Sinan, Mimar, 112 Skopje/U¨sku¨p, 1, 5, 31, 94 bazaar of, 52 – 3 burning of, 119 fall to Serbs, 42 – 3, 47 landmarks of, 50 – 1, 112, 155 Su¨leyman I, 110 Su¨leymaniye Mosque, 112 Sultan Murat Mosque, 32, 50, 62 Suna Hanım (Kocaimamog˘lu), 183 Tefeyyu¨z School, 80, 168 Tito, Josip Broz, 91, 93, 168 Topkapı Palace, Istanbul, 112, 114 trauma, 13, 58, 231, 219 Trotsky, Leon, 42 Turkey dialect and language and relation to Balkan migrants, 94, 95, 128 economy and education, 174–5 foreign policy and relation to Balkan migrants, 93, 189, 190 – 2, 216 its political upheavals, 122, 146, 154, 157, 174 – 5, 176 Turkish nationalism, 13, 136, 231

265

Turkish society, 128, 174, 176, 181– 2 Tu¨rkhan, Lu¨tfu¨, 192, 216 UDBA, Yugoslav State Secret Security, 75, 84, 131, 133 urban solidarity, 68 U¨sku¨p, see Skopje Vardar Association, Vardarlılar Mutual Assistance Association (Vardarlılar Yardımlama Cemiyeti), 92, 128, 129, 130– 2, 135, 228 Vardarspor, football team, 137, 138 Vecihe Hanım (Emirog˘lu), 46, 48, 221 widow index, 123 women and the Rumeli Association, 17, 180, 181 activities of the women’s commission, 182, 187, 188 Yakup, Nazmi O¨mer, 83, 86 Ya Sin Sura, 16, 224 Yelmen, Hasan, 59 – 63 Yıldırım Beyazit, 4 Yılmaz, Mesut, 192 Yo¨ru¨k, 169 Young Turks, 24– 6 youth and Rumeli Association, 188, 194, 221 Yu¨cel Organization founding of, 205 mevlid for, 204, 215 – 17 new research on, 2007– 8, 214 trials and executions of leaders: 82– 5, 203, 205 – 6 Yugoslavia, 76, 206 Zaimog˘lu, Ziya Ilhan, 149 – 50 zekat, 129, 157, 229

S

Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul is a rare ethnography of an Islamic urban group based on extensive archival research and interviews in various languages across Istanbul, Skopje and Kosovo. Trix’s unique approach brings a human element to the study of forced migration, conflict, and trauma. This is an important book for academics and policymakers interested in the Balkans, the Middle East, Turkey and migration studies.

“A beautifully written, lively, detailed discussion of the history of Balkan migrants in Istanbul. It is thorough, well documented, has a historical and contemporary perspective, and people in the story come out as real people. There is no such book like it on the topic.” Esra Özyürek, Associate Professor and Chair for Contemporary Turkish Studies at the European Institute, London School of Economics

Frances Trix is Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology at Indiana University. She has published numerous books and edited collections, including Albanians in Michigan (2001) and The Sufi Journey of Baba Rexheb (2009).

Cover image: Man with tea, Istanbul. (© Frances Trix) Design: Positive2

www.ibtauris.com

Identity and Trauma Among Balkan Immigrants

“Gracefully and very accessibly written, highly scholarly, ethically and personally engaged without sentimentalizing its subject.” Margaret Mills, Professor Emerita, Ohio State University

Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul

Frances Trix analyzes the development of the oldest such association, originally founded to welcome new migrants as they arrived from Skopje after World War II, and shows how Islam is central to its structure and practices. Her wide-ranging study variously focuses on its leadership, the growing role of women in the organization, and the importance of music and poetry in coping with exile. In so doing, she raises wider questions concerning the preservation and articulation of identity amongst migrant communities.

Frances Trix

ince the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–8, approximately two and a half million Muslims living in the Balkans have been forced from their homes. Some fled following World War II, and traveled east by train to Istanbul with no more than a suitcase. And yet 50 years later, one of their migrant associations was second only to the Red Crescent in providing aid to the urban poor of Istanbul.

Urban Muslim Migrants in Istanbul Identity and Trauma Among Balkan Immigrants

Frances Trix