Multidirectional Narrative and Identity Amongst the Istanbul-Greek Migrant
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Heirs to Byzantium: Multidirectional Narrative and Identity Amongst the Istanbul-Greek Migrant Community in Greece Huw Halstead MA (by research) University of York Department of History September 2012 Abstract Social memory has often been treated as a competitive arena in which particular memories connected to particular identities vie for official recognition, the winners suppressing the losers. Against this competitive model, literary scholar Michael Rothberg has argued for a multidirectional approach to the study of memory, which seeks to examine the productive interaction between diverse historical narratives. This thesis tests the literary multidirectional model through the historical study of the Istanbul-Greek migrants to Greece. The Istanbul Greeks were a remnant of pre- national Ottoman pluralism, a Christian minority within Turkey forced to emigrate during the twentieth century due to nationalistic persecution and discrimination. Through the migrants’ oral testimonies, this thesis demonstrates that a multidirectional approach to identity and memory better reflects how the Istanbul Greeks cope with the pressures of migration through a malleable sense of self, and by intricately linking and manipulating a variety of historical discourses in diverse social contexts. Whilst social memories can be employed competitively to establish group exclusivity, they can also be deployed to reach across social divides, and open up group memberships. Far from belonging to one nation, one group, one memory, the migrants survive multifaceted lives through recourse to multidirectional narratives. Memory is not a battlefield, but an unbounded discursive space in which individuals and groups narrate their histories to make experiences meaningful and socially useful. Contents Preface ................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgments ................................................................................................. iii Author’s Declaration ............................................................................................. vi Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 Multidirectional memory ........................................................................ 1 Historical background and literature review ......................................... 5 The interviewees ...................................................................................... 25 Methodology – oral history and subjectivity .......................................... 26 Chapter One: Kinetic Identity ............................................................................... 29 Greeks or Romans? ................................................................................. 30 Official self – citizenship and identity ..................................................... 38 Orthodox Christians ................................................................................ 42 How happy is he who says, ‘I am a Turk’ ............................................... 43 Ottoman Greek ........................................................................................ 48 ‘A child of the island’ – localising identity ............................................. 49 A kinetic identity ..................................................................................... 51 Chapter Two: Harmony and Strife in Intercommunal Relationships .................... 56 The strife narrative ................................................................................. 57 The harmony narrative ........................................................................... 63 Narrative and history .............................................................................. 71 Narrative and identity ............................................................................. 77 Narrative in the present .......................................................................... 78 Competing collective memories? ............................................................ 89 Chapter Three: Multidirectional Narratives .......................................................... 94 Married negotiation ................................................................................ 94 Hidden Christians and the good Turk ..................................................... 99 Maoism and political communal relationships ....................................... 103 Narrative appropriation and juxtaposition ............................................. 115 Solidarity with the expelled – intercommunal negotiation ..................... 125 Multidirectional narratives ..................................................................... 135 Chapter Four: Culture’s In-between – Inclusion and Exclusion ........................... 137 A touch of spice – cuisine, gender, and identity ..................................... 138 Workmanship and the economy .............................................................. 150 Cultural inclusion ................................................................................... 158 In-between cultures ................................................................................. 163 Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 164 Epilogue - Multidirectional Memory and Greco-Turkish Relations ..................... 173 Definitions ............................................................................................................. 174 Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 175 Appendix 1 ............................................................................................................ 203 List of Figures Fig. 1: Tea at the Constantinopolitan Union, photograph by author .................... 141 i Preface He was born in the early ‘50s in the City of the Light of the East, which once had been for some a gateway of bliss. He wanted to revisit it after twenty long years of voluntary migration … He longed for the return but a deeper feeling from his fear postponed his meeting with familiar places, images, smells, and voices … He had grown up in the same city, the same neighbourhood, in the same apartment at the turn of the century, almost without ever leaving … He had the misfortune to live the final glimpses of a multi-ethnic, multi-confessional community in a former imperial capital, which changed with nightmarish speed in the second half of the shortest century. He lived the irrational madness of rising fanaticism between left and right, [between] majority and minority … Sometimes he reflects that the best years of his life were his teenage ones … when the summers were spent carefree swimming, reading, wandering and flirting in the warmth of friends on the island. The only trouble was the migration [to the island] – [with] the packages [of] quilts, bedding, the fridge, the oven … summer clothes … even the radio moved with the ship, and you must not break or lose anything … When the big relocation happened … everything was more simple, only a huge suitcase [of] clothes and twenty-four hours stuck to the plastic seat wet with sweat on the coach line Istanbul - Athens, non-stop. He landed for a new life in Vathis Square.1 The extract is taken from an autobiographical account written by Savvas Tsilenus, an Istanbul-born Greek-speaker currently living in the Greek capital Athens. Tsilenus and his fellow Istanbul Greeks were a remnant of a once thriving Greek community in Turkey, a vestige of pre-national pluralism dismantled during the course of the twentieth century. Tsilenus’ story hovers fluidly between past and present as he attempts to negotiate between fearful regret and fond nostalgia. He opens with his nostalgic longing to return to the city of his birth, from which he has been a voluntary exile – he was not expelled, and is not a refugee. Yet his 1 Adapted from S. Tsilenus, ‘The Migration’, I Dexameni: Journal of Literature and Art of Istanbul, Imbros, and Tenedos, (Athens, 1999), pp. 96-102. ii repatriation was induced by the ‘irrational madness’ of nationalistic persecution, as the homogenising tendencies of the nation-state strangled minority life in Istanbul. His memories are conflicting: a fear of nightmarish fanaticism jockeying for position alongside idyllic recollections of multiethnic harmony and carefree summer days. He contrasts the annual migration to the summer vacation island – complex and overburdened – with his migration to Greece – surreal in its simplicity and speed. The interplay of these two narratives throws the trauma of forced migration into sharp relief – a whole life lived and diligently transported to-and-fro from city to island, abandoned in one twenty-four hour span with only what can be carried in a suitcase. The pleasant warmth of companionship on the island is contrasted with the unpleasant sticky humidity of the coach journey; the finality of the journey emphasised by its non-stop route. In his account memories from diverse spatial and temporal origins interact to produce an evocative rendering of forced migration. iii Acknowledgments I am above all indebted to my informants, who patiently responded to my questions, welcomed me into their homes, provided me with literature, introduced me to other interviewees, and served me endless cups of tea. The guarantee