Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/28535 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation Author: Erol, Emre Title: Capitalism, migration, war and nationalism in an Aegean port town: the rise and fall of a Belle Époque in the Ottoman county of Foçateyn Issue Date: 2014-09-09 CHAPTER IV Beginning of the Transition and the Transformation: On the Road to the Spring of Organized Chaos On the 31st of August in 1913, the Sublime Porte (Bâb-ı Âli) approved the request of Félix Sartiaux, a philhellene French archaeologist, for archaeological explorations around the province of Aydın and in the county of Foçateyn for a six month period.283 Following this approval, Sartiaux and his team started their explorations that same year284 and later excavations285 in the central town of the county of Foçateyn, Eski Foça. Mr. Sartiaux and his team, consisting of Mrs. Carlier, Dandria and Manciet,286 stayed in the county of Foçateyn from 1913 to June 1914. Their work came to a close with a milestone event for the county of Foçateyn: the Spring of Organized Chaos. They witnessed the horrors that befell the residents of the county in its boomtown Eski Foça. Their coincidental presence resulted in testimonies and photographs that open a window onto a phenomenon that engulfed the region around them at the time. Their work was interrupted, just as the relatively peaceful and prosperous life in the 283 For the first approval of his request for exploratory drilling (sondaj ameliyatı) granted by the Sublime Port, see: BOA, BEO., 4209/315604, (Hicrî, 28/N /1331). 284 Their initial explorations (sondaj ameliyatı) lasted 5 weeks between September 1913 and October 1913. Following his initial findings, Sartiaux wrote a report and presented it on the 6th of January in 1914 to l’académie des inscriptions et belles- lettres in Paris. It is therefore clear that he left Foçateyn after his initial explorations and came back later to resume detailed excavations in the county sometime around the spring of 1914. For the original report he presented, see: Félix Sartiaux, Note sur l’exploration de l’Ancienne Phocée, en septembre-octobre 1913, (Paris, 1914). For a Turkish translation see: Félix Sartiaux, Eski Foça / Foça Tarihi’ne Bir Bakış, (İzmir: Ege Turizm Cemiyeti Yayınları, No: 6, 1952). 285 Later, Sartiaux’s permission for exploration drilling was changed to a permission for excavation (hafriyat) and it was also extended for a year on the 17th of May, 1914. See: BOA, İ..MMS., 183 / 1332/C-07, (Hicrî 21/C /1332), and BOA, BEO., 4285/321315 (Hicrî 22/C /1332). 286 The Ottoman Ministry of Education of the time (Maarif Nezareti) also mentioned a certain Mösyö Harnpo from France who had also conducted exploration drillings in the county of Foçateyn in August of 1913. He may well have been a member of Mr. Sartiaux’s team. For the document about his drilling, see: BOA, İ.MF., 21 / 1331/N-1, (Hicrî 27/N /1331). 159 boomtown in which they worked. Sartiaux and his team thus witnessed Eski Foça’s (and thus the county of Foçateyn’s) transition from a boomtown to a ghost town. Later, Félix Sartiaux came back once more to resume his work in Eski Foça in 1919 following the Greek occupation of Western Anatolia. In fact, he came back to Eski Foça on a ship that had transported some of the Ottoman Greeks ousted in 1914 and an important figure, George Horton, American consul of Izmir (Smyrna) whose account of the fire of Izmir in 1922 became a frequent reference. Mr. Sartiaux’s second visit lasted until the winter of 1920 when he completed his excavations. The eyewitness accounts and the photographs of Félix Sartiaux and his team (especially Mr. Manciet’s) constitute one of the most important primary sources of this period of turmoil. By the time Sartiaux had started his archaeological work in September 1913, Ottoman Anatolia was on the verge of becoming the next battlefield of rival nationalisms and imperialisms after the Balkans. However, as discussed in the previous chapter, neither the previous century nor the twenty years before the Second Constitutional revolution could foretell the traumatic period that was to befall the county of Foçateyn. In fact, Foçateyn was a developing county with a growing population and economy. When the salt from Ottoman Eski Foça was displayed at the famous Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and was awarded a medal287 as an important export good, Eski Foça was already a burgeoning town. The county, together with settlements such as Yeni Foça (Νέες Φώκιες), Gerenköy (Γκερένκιοϊ), Kozbeyli (Κούζµπεγλί) and Ulupınar, was producing important goods for both the internal and the external markets. Located on the Western Anatolian shore, Foçateyn belonged to the central regions of the traditional ‘core empire’. However in the early twentieth century this positive outlook was going to change dramatically. The events of the spring of 1914 (right before the World War I) in the county of Foçateyn were only a chapter of bigger transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, from ‘core empire’ to a borderland and from a bourgeoning trade hub to a fishing county of a few thousand in the early Republic. 287 BOA,YA. Hus, 288/55, 10/B /1311. 160 In 1914, just before the advent of ‘organized chaos’, which resulted in the forced migration and killing of Ottoman Greeks, the county had a population of approximately 23,000288 the majority of whom were Ottoman Greeks. This included many Greeks (Ottoman or otherwise) who had migrated from the islands in the Aegean and beyond for job opportunities289 especially starting in the mid-19th century. Muslims, whether Kurdish, Turkish or otherwise, had long been residents of the county along with non-Muslims such as Greeks, Armenians and Jews. Native populations, together with the almost omnipresent migrants (which were limited until the nineteenth century to small numbers of voluntary immigrants) constituted a cosmopolitan society that reached its apex in the pre-World War I context. On a given 288 This number is derived from the number of all the residents of the county of Foçateyn in 1914. Since seasonal migration was a widespread phenomenon in the Western Anatolian region it is not possible to give exact numbers for the settlements in the county. In summer, most of the residents in the county seasonally migrated to Eski Foça which was the largest settlement in the county. 289 As was discussed in the previous chapter, the county of Foçateyn was one of the many centers that attracted migration on the Western Anatolian coast. Although it is not possible to know the exact number of these migrants who came to the county of Foçateyn starting in the 1850s, it is highly likely that there were less of them than native Ottoman Greeks. They mostly consisted of Ottoman citizens of the Aegean islands who migrated for better job opportunities. For a discussion of this migratory pattern see the previous chapter and Reşat Kasaba, ‘Migrant Labor in Ottoman Agriculture’, Çağlar Keyder and Faruk Tabak eds., Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991, pp. 113-121. In addition, most of the old Foçateyn resident interviewees in CAMS (Center of Asia Minor Institute, Athens) oral history documents (under subfolders ΠΑΛΙΕΣ ΦΩΚΙΕΣ and ΝΕΕΣ ΦΩΚΙΕΣ) stated that either one or both of their parents were from the Kingdom of Greece (or likely held such a passport). They also stated that their parents were often islanders who previously resided on one of the Aegean islands. Therefore, even for Foçateyn Greeks themselves, the boundaries of identity were not well defined. According to Kitromilides, most of the Greek-speaking populations concentrated on the Western Anatolian coast in the 19th century were a product of migration from the Aegean islands and continental Greece (See: Paschalis M. Kitromilides, ‘Greek Irredentism in Asia Minor and Cyprus’, Middle Eastern Studies, 1990, 26:1, 4.) There are no sources, however, referring to the number of non-Ottoman Greeks in the county. Nonetheless, even if we had such numbers, it is also known that with the introduction of universal conscription by the Young Turks in 1909, many Ottoman Greeks changed their nationality or left the Empire in order to dodge conscription. (See: Erik Jan Zürcher, Modernleşen Türkiye Tarihi, İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 155.) This contributed to the blurring of the already ‘vague’ boundary between the Greeks of Greece and the Greeks of the Empire. 161 day, one would have heard around eight languages290 in the harbour of Eski Foça. However, by the early Republican period Eski Foça was practically a deserted ghost town that was demographically engineered into a ‘homogenous’ national community. Less than one third of its population remained. Devastated by constant warfare, migrations, banditry and state violence, Foçateyn lost its human resources, infrastructure and economic know-how. [Picture: Photograph showing Félix Sartiaux and some locals working for him in Eski Foça in 1913. Source: Yiakoumis et al., Phocée, 113.] Félix Sartiaux and his team witnessed crucial parts of this period of transition in the county of Foçateyn: the early days of the post-Balkan War period, the ousting of the Ottoman Greeks from the county in the spring of 1914 and some of the period of Greek occupation of the county of Foçateyn between 1919 and 1920. This chapter aims to elaborate on the milestone of the transition in the county, which is the Spring 290 Throughout my research I came across to a few accounts referring to different languages that the residents of Foçateyn used to speak. These languages were Arabic, Armenian, French, Greek, Ladino, Italian, Kurdish and Ottoman.