The Post-Second World War Immigration of the Yugoslav
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The Post-Second World War Immigration of the Yugoslav Muslims to Turkey (1953-1968) By Nikolina Rajkovic Submitted to Central European University History Department In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Supervisor: Professor Tolga Esmer Second Reader: Professor Tijana Krstic CEU eTD Collection Budapest, Hungary 2012 “Copyright in the text of this thesis rests with the Author. Copies by any process, either in full or part, may be made only in accordance with the instructions given by the Author and lodged in the Central European Library. Details may be obtained from the librarian. This page must form a part of any such copies made. Further copies made in accordance with such instructions may not be made without the written permission of the Author.” CEU eTD Collection Abstract In this thesis I study the conjunction of causal factors and motivations informing the emigration of the Muslim communities from the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia to Turkey in the period from 1953 to 1968. The Muslims who left for Turkey in this period were allowed to leave the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia according to the agreement on migration signed between Turkey and the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia in 1953. The migrants were legally categorized as serbest göçmen (free migrants) which meant they were leaving for Turkey on a voluntary basis and this legal status allowed them to settle wherever they want in Turkey receiving no benefits other than citizenship and tax break. My ethnographic research was conducted in Istanbul in 2011, and it is based on ten interviews I gathered from the first generation immigrants who came to Istanbul during the 1950s and 1960s. These oral accounts offer an interesting glimpse into the complexities of reasons and motives for migration and peculiarities of socio-historical context within which migration took place. Whereas the scholarship on this migration largely opts for ideologically- driven explanations and finds the factors for leaving were of a political and religious nature, the interviewee’s significantly challenge and nuance arguments posited in mainstream historiography. CEU eTD Collection Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the kindness, care, hospitality and great stories that the immigrants from Yugoslavia shared with me. Thus, I devote this work to them. I am very grateful to my supervisor, Professor Tolga Esmer who kept encouraging me to engage in this project from the very beginning and whose friendliness and professional support was indeed precious. I would also like to thank my supervisor Professor Tijana Krstic, whom I admire and who provided many constructive comments and support. I would also like to mention how happy I was to be a student of Professor Marsha Siefert who is an incredible person and scholar who gave invaluable comments and criticisms on all of my work in her stimulating classes. I am also grateful to my Professors Selim Deringil and Arzu Ozturkmen for helping me with this research. I am especially thankful to Tulay Tahir for her help in contacting the immigrants. Thank you all! It is pleasure to know all of you. CEU eTD Collection Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter I: Oral History and Migration: Theoretical and Methodological Framework of the Thesis ............................................................................................................................................. 9 Notes on fieldwork ................................................................................................................................. 13 Interviews ............................................................................................................................................... 14 Finding the migrant communities ........................................................................................................... 15 Settings of the interview ......................................................................................................................... 21 My role as researcher .............................................................................................................................. 22 Chapter II: History of the Migration Movements to Turkey from the Former Yugoslav states ............................................................................................................................................. 25 2.1. Migrations in the Late Ottoman Era (1878-1923) ........................................................................... 25 2.2 Migration in the period between 1923 and 1945 .............................................................................. 29 2.3. Migration in the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (1953-1968) ........................................ 33 Chapter III: Question of Nations and Nationalities in the Federal Peoples’ Republic of Yugoslavia ................................................................................................................................... 37 3.1 The Policy of Nations and Nationalities in the FPRY ...................................................................... 37 3.2 The Policy of Nations and Nationalities in Macedonia .................................................................... 42 Chapter IV: The Settlement and Immigration Policies in a New Turkey: The Early Republican Period (1923-1934) ................................................................................................. 46 Chapter V: Voluntary vs. Compulsory Migration ................................................................. 62 5.1. “We came as free migrants!” ........................................................................................................... 63 5.2. Resentment and Stories of Success ................................................................................................. 69 CEU eTD Collection Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................. 82 Chapter VI: Reasons and Motives for Migration: Migrant Accounts vs. Historiography on Migration from The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia to Turkey (1953-1968) ....... 84 Introduction notes ................................................................................................................................... 84 6.1. National and Political Reasons ........................................................................................................ 85 6.2. Economic reasons ............................................................................................................................ 92 6.3. The social and cultural reasons ...................................................................................................... 101 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 112 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 114 Appendices: Questionnaire ...................................................................................................... 120 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 121 CEU eTD Collection Introduction My topic addresses the insufficiently explained phenomenon of migration from the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia to Turkey in the period between 1953 and 1968. In the context of Southeast Europe, m igrations have been a widespread social phenomenon since the early eighteenth century when the Ottoman Empire began its protracted withdrawal from its former European possessions. Episodes of flight and ethnic cleansing recurred throughout the nineteenth century, with the wars for independence of Greece in the 1830s and of the Bulgarian principality in 1878 featuring as important moments of rupture. These dynamics extended throughout the Balkan Wars of 1912-14, the Greco- Turkish War and the consequent Lausanne Exchange of Populations in the 1920s. Every emerging predominately Christian state in the Balkans eventually coerced at least part of its Muslim population to flee the country. These nineteenth - and twentieth-century wars and population exchanges resulted in around one and a half million Muslims being evicted or forced to flee, almost exclusively to Turkey.1 Nevertheless, it must also be emphasized that the rise of competing nationalisms resulted not only in a long-term exodus of Muslim communities from the Balkans to Anatolia but also in even larger Christian communities fleeing in the opposite direction, from Anatolia to Greece, for example. CEU eTD Collection 1 In his book Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821-1922 American historian Justin McCarthy studies Muslim communities from the Balkans, the northern Caucasus and Russian Armenia who were forced to flee to what is today Turkey. McCarthy argues that between 1821 and 1922 more than five million Muslims were driven from their lands, whereas, five and one half million of Muslims, most of them Turks, were killed in wars or perished as refugees from starvation and disease, see Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile : The Ethnic Cleansing