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Abstract
As the successor to the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottoman Empire, modern Turkey inherited many non-Turkish-speaking Muslim communities. This article is concerned with Albanians in Turkey, one of the Muslim communities which migrated in large numbers to Anatolia during and after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire to escape conflict and massacre in the Balkans. Based on historical studies and oral history interviews, we account for the Albanian migration to Turkey during the 1912–13 Balkan Wars and demonstrate the formation and transformation of an Albanian community in Samsun Province in the Black Sea.
Notes
We thank first and foremost our respondents in Samsun for enabling us to conduct this research. We are particularly indebted to the members of the Reçicë family who opened their houses as well as their hearts and became our family in Samsun. We can never thank them enough for their trust and generosity. We regret that we cannot list their names here. We would like to dedicate this article to them and to all Albanian refugees and immigrants in Turkey.
Research for this paper was supported in part by a fellowship to Kelly L. Maynard from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Documenting Endangered Languages Program, Reference Number FN-500017-07. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
1. For example, see F. Dündar, Ittihat ve Terakki'nin Müslümanları Iskan Politikası 1913–1918 (Istanbul: Iletişim Yayınları, 2001); R. Hirschon (ed.), Ege'yi Geçerken: 1923 Türk-Yunan Zorunlu Nüfus Mübadelesi (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Universitesi Yayınları, 2005); I. Tekeli, ‘Osmanlıİmparatorluğu'ndan Günümüze Nüfusun Zorunlu Yer Değiştirmesi ve İskan Sorunu’, Toplum ve Bilim, No.50 (1990), pp.49–72. There is still little research on non-Turkish Muslim diaspora communities in Turkey. The reasons for this could be the low profile most of these communities prefer to keep for political and cultural reasons as well as the ideological barrier researchers have developed with regards to ethnicity studies in Turkey. For example, see S. Aydın, Amacımız Devletin Bekası: Demokratikleşme Sürecinde Devlet ve Yurttaşlar (Istanbul: TESEV, 2005) on how many non-Turkish Muslims are afraid of being discriminated against if they voice any public claims regarding their identity and roots. However, promising work has also been done recently on one of the most prolific non-Turkish Muslim diasporic communities in Turkey, the Circassians. See, for example, M. Çelikpala, ‘From Immigrants to Diaspora: Influence of the North Caucasian Diaspora in Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.42 (2006), pp.423–46 and A. Kaya, ‘Cultural Reification in Circassian Diaspora: Stereotypes, Prejudices and Ethnic Relations’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol.31 (2005), pp.129–49.
2. K.L. Maynard. Project Description, Documenting Endangered Languages Fellowship Proposal (NSF/NEH, 2006) pp.6–7. For a slightly different periodization see G. de Rapper, ‘Albanians facing the Ottoman Past’, in S. Gangloff (ed.), The Perception of the Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2005), pp.197–214.
3. F. Schevill, A History of the Balkans (New York: Dorset, 1991) [Originally published as History of the Balkan Peninsula from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922)], pp. 185, 230–31.
4. S. Faroqhi and B. McGowan, An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Vol.2 1600–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p.447.
5. R. Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy: The Nineteenth Century (New York, SUNY Series in Middle Eastern Studies, 1988), p.69.
6. S.L. Malcomson, Borderlands: Nation and Empire (London: Faber and Faber, 1994), pp.148–50.
7. F. Dündar, Türkiye Nüfus Sayımlarında Azınlıklar (Istanbul: Doz Yayınları, 1999), pp.81–3.
8. It is impossible to provide any official or precise numbers of those who identify themselves as ethnic Albanians as census data do not ask for ethnic identification in Turkey.
9. See J. Lie on the significance of diaspora studies in deciphering the complex transnational networks that transcend national borders and help sustain communities embedded in transnational relations and identities. J. Lie, ‘From International Migration to Transnational Diaspora, Contemporary Sociology, Vol.24 (1995), pp.303–6.
10. Some of the places we received responses from, in addition to Samsun, were Adapazarı, Ankara, Bursa, Eskişehir, İstanbul and İzmir. Later we came to know communities from Adana as well. We chose Samsun for the sake of convenience as Dr. Genis started working in Samsun at the time we were planning fieldwork on this subject. We have extended our research to these localities as well since 2006 and started to interview families from these cities. We plan to use the data gathered from these interviews in future publications but it will suffice to state for now that our observation on the migration and settlement history of Samsun Albanians is a common experience shared by Albanians settled elsewhere in Turkey.
11. The fact that both of us have some affiliation with Albanians and Kosovars has helped to facilitate our research greatly. While Şerife Geniş herself has a grandfather who migrated from Kosovo after the Balkan Wars, Kelly Lynne Maynard wrote her Senior Thesis on an Albanian refugee community in Greece and her Ph.D. on the history and dialects of the Albanian language. Kelly speaks a Southern Albanian dialect and was able to communicate with the elders of the community. Şerife does not speak any Albanian except a couple of words even though she has Albanian-speaking parents. This situation created an interesting context and ignited debates on the future of Albanian identity and language in the diaspora among our informants. We plan to discuss the relationship between the identity of the researcher and the informants and the effect of this relationship on fieldwork in a future article.
12. We are using a pseudonym for the village to protect the anonymity of our respondents.
13. Schevill, A History of the Balkans, pp.184–8.
14. Ibid., pp.186-7.
15. N. Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp.97–8.
16. R. Katičić, ‘Ancient Languages of the Balkans', State of the Art Reports 4, in W. Winter (ed.), Trends in Linguistics (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), p.186.
17. Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, pp.134–5, 177.
18. Schevill, A History of the Balkans, pp.228–9.
19. In 1804 a group of Serbians around Belgrade revolted and thus began the nine-year Serbian War of Independence which in the end was only partly successful. In 1815 the Ottomans created the principality of Serbia. This principality was still part of the Ottoman Empire, but had a degree of autonomy. Earlier in 1799 the principality of Montenegro had been acknowledged by the Sultan. See Schevill, A History of the Balkans, pp.318–20.
20. Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, p.194.
21. Schevill, A History of the Balkans; S.J. Shaw and E.K. Shaw. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
22. Shaw and Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, p.183.
23. Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, p.5.
24. Tekeli, ‘Osmanlıİmparatorluğu'ndan Günümüze’, p.56.
25. D. Anderson, The Balkan Volunteers (London: Hutchison, 1968), p.193.
26. J. McCarthy, ‘Muslims in Ottoman Europe: Population from 1800–1912’, Nationalities Papers, Vol.28 (2000), p.35.
27. Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, pp.6–7.
28. Schevill, A History of the Balkans, pp.470–81.
29. M. Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews 1430–1950 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), pp.313–17.
30. See http://www.kosovaelire.com/histori_kelark_speciale_argumente_020.php. The document is entitled ‘Shpërngulja e Shqiptarëve Prej Kosovës në Turqi 1912–1915’ (XX).
31. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Report of the International Commission to Inquire into the Causes and Conduct of the Balkan Wars (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1914), pp.417, maps, il.
32. Tekeli, ‘Osmanlıİmparatorluğu'ndan Günümüze’, pp.56–7.
33. Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts, pp.313–17.
34. J. McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821–1922 (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1995), p.141.
35. Ibid., p.142.
36. Anderson, The Balkan Volunteers; Dündar, Ittihat ve Terakki'nin Müslümanları Iskan Politikası; and McCarthy, Death and Exile.
37. Dündar, Ittihat ve Terakki'nin Müslümanları Iskan Politikası, pp.84–6.
38. Ibid., pp.112–21.
39. A. Gashi, Shqipëria Hartë Etnike (no information available on place of publication and date of publication)
40. A. Jakupi, Për ata, Kosova ështëëndërr- Shqiptarët në Vilajetin e Samsunit – (udhëpërshkrime-ese) (Prishtina: Vatra, 1998).
41. Jakupi, Për ata, Kosova ështëëndërr- shqiptarët në vilajetin e samsunit – (udhëpërshkrime-ese), p.49
42. Jakupi, Për ata, Kosova ështëëndërr- shqiptarët në vilajetin e samsunit – (udhëpërshkrime-ese), p.62
43. Jakupi, Për ata, Kosova ështëëndërr- shqiptarët në vilajetin e samsunit – (udhëpërshkrime-ese), p.70.
44. On the population exchange see, R. Hirschon (ed.), Ege'yi Geçerken: 1923 Türk–Yunan Zorunlu Nüfus Mübadelesi (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi Universitesi Yayınları, 2005).
45. It should be noted that some of the persons identified as Lazi by our respondents might not be really Lazi by ethnic origin. It is common in Turkey to identify people from the Eastern Black Sea region as Lazi. In reality, however, Lazis are only one among many different ethnic groups in that region. See M.E. Meeker, ‘The Black Sea Turks: Some Aspects of Their Ethnic and Cultural Background’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.2, No.4 (1971), pp.318–45.
46. Maynard, Project Description.