Keywords

Introduction

Burgaz, one of the Princes’ Islands, is 30–45 minutes by boat from Istanbul. The geographical location of Burgaz, an island away yet nearby a cosmopolitan city, creates a sense of duality and contrasts between marginality and centrality, temporariness and permanence, winter and summer, escape and “stuckness,” freedom and prison for the islanders. Green (2005, 13) draws attention to the fact that the where of the place affects the people of that place. What made Pogoni (at the Greek-Albanian border in Epirus) an ambiguous place was not only the fact that the place was neither at the border, nor a consequence of its topography, but also the ways in which the relative location of this place created movements, separations, reunions of people which made the place and the people generic. The stories told by these people, whether it concerned their story of moving from one place to another, their contingent identities, or whether this place is at the border, reflected difference yet, similarity. She stated: “In that sense, even the marginality of Pogoni was ambiguous: if the people and place were marginal, it was not the marginality of otherness, of difference, or of distinction; it was more the marginality of being nothing in particular” (Green 2005, 13).

Burgaz is also an ambiguous place, and carries notions of a “marginal hub” (Marsden and Reeves 2019) and of being a small island. The fact that it is a small island, its remoteness, boundedness, smallness and connections, the wider socio-economic and political context and its relation with the mainland affect the social dynamics on the island (see Baldacchino 2004; Baldacchino 2006; Baldacchino and Veenendaal 2018; Royle and Brinklow 2018; Skinner 2002; Just 2000). While the fact that Burgaz is an island away from the mainland creates a sense of marginality, the fact that it is connected to the mainland and the other isles by a short boat trip makes this place less marginal and less isolated. For example, the children of the islands go to Heybeliada or Büyükada high schools. There are no ATMs, banks and supermarkets in Burgaz. Burgaz islanders go to Büyükada and Heybeliada to shop for cheaper prices and for their banking needs. This network is also a medium for forming and maintaining friendships across islands. On the other hand, people move back and forth between Istanbul and Burgaz, whether for day trips, for shopping, or for spending a season or two in Burgaz or in Istanbul. This kind of a location, being close to Istanbul, a cosmopolitan city and being separated by it by water, created movements and migrations, which made Burgaz at different times in history, a place of exile, a resort and also a hub of diversity.

This diverse and complex island, a marginal hub, was my field site where I stayed for 14 months from July 2009 until September 2010 and continued my research through short field trips, further semi-structured interviews and analysis of Burgaz islanders’ media use and media productions until 2022 in order to explore conviviality. Marginal hubs do not fit into the duality of “urban-rural, mountain-versus lowland, inland versus oceanic, connected versus disconnected, within or beyond the gaze of the central state” (Marsden and Reeves 2019, 774). Burgaz is affected by the wider political situation in Turkey and the neighbouring countries. The islanders feel the political oppression on its non-Muslim communities, and have experienced Turkification policies as “azınlık, ekaliyet” (minority) and the anti-Muslim rhetoric in Istanbul and Turkey. Nonetheless, the islanders fight against the national rhetoric that might tend to exclude a particular group, such as non-Muslim minorities or unrecognised Alevis and Kurds.

Burgaz also provides an excellent empirical case study of post-Ottoman conviviality, because the homogenisation process during the nation-building stage of modern Turkey triggered migrations from the island, especially of non-Muslims, yet the island’s population retains elements of its Byzantine and Ottoman diversity. In order to understand the historical and political context of this diversity, the homogenization process and how the categorisation of differences were reinscribed during the transition from the Ottoman Empire to Modern Turkish Republic, in this chapter, I explain the Ottoman Empire’s millet system and how the demographics of the island changed following the domestic and foreign policies that oppressed the non-Muslim minorities and the unrecognised Muslims, such as the Alevis and Kurds, in Turkey and on the island. I document the impact of Turkification policies during the building of Modern Turkey and international conflicts between Greece, Cyprus and Turkey on people’s everyday life. In Chap. 8, I investigate the AKP’s (the ruling party) shifting approach from “democratisation” to intolerance and authoritarianism towards the non-recognised minorities.

The chapter has the following structure: I first describe the island life, its inhabitants, its nature, the seasonal population fluctuations and the division of labour on the island to give a sense of the life in Burgaz. Then, I set the historical and political context of diversity on the island. I end the chapter, by my arrival to the island and describe my methodology and the ethical measures I have taken.

Island Life

Seasonal Population Fluctuations, Class and the Division of Labour

The current population of Burgaz increases from 1500 in the winter to 7000 in the summer. This seasonal change creates complicated dynamics, with economic dependency and tension between the summer residents and permanent inhabitants. The permanent inhabitants run the shops and restaurants, and the summer residents are the customers and sometimes employers, who hire them as cleaners, gardeners, caretakers and so on. The permanent inhabitants, mostly Zaza and Kurdish Alevis as well as Sunni Muslims, have much less work in the winter (between November and April) and thus have less income during that period. In order to earn enough for the whole year and to compensate for the times when they do not earn enough, they raise their prices in the summer. This creates tension between the summer inhabitants, who complain about paying much more for the goods they buy and receiving less for the service they get. These summer inhabitants are wealthy, upper-middle-class business people, artists, journalists, actors, architects and lawyers—Sunni Muslims, Armenians, Jews, Rums,Footnote 1 Levantines and Germans—who have been living for generations in Burgaz for three to eight months a year during the spring/summer season. They usually go to the same foreign schools in Istanbul, they work in similar sectors and hence, they can afford to pay to eat out, or to become members of the social clubs. Sharing the same class creates similarities in lifestyle. In Bourdieu’s (1990) terms, they have the social capital and they have similar habitus. Their similar lifestyle creates milieu for sociality. Nonetheless, sharing the same class does not only bring joyful times when people eat, drink and laugh together. Belonging to an upper class also creates jealousy and competition, especially within an ethnic and religious group. In the following chapters, I explore the ways in which class plays a significant role in people’s social interactions in daily life.

Nature, Weather and the Island Life

Burgaz is more like a small village. You walk on narrow village-type paths. Since no cars are allowed on the island, you are surrounded by sea, green, flowers, trees, berries and animals. Nature is salient for the islanders; it is what makes the island a unique place of living. The nature in Burgaz ties them to the island and when I ask the islanders what Burgaz means to them, they start talking about the nature, the animals and the botany on Burgaz. The nature also forms an important part of the islanders’ memories, which I explore in the Chap. 5. When you walk in the streets of Burgaz, you will see many street cats, dogs and sea gulls. Many inhabitants keep the rest of their meals for them. Some will cook extra pasta to give to cats and dogs. Some will buy cat food from shops regularly to feed the street cats. Some will adopt them and have a space in their garden and/or house. You will see people carrying gallons of water to put in big public basins on the street so that dogs, cats and seagulls can drink water during the hot summer days. Some keep a big basin full of water in their garden for animals to drink. You will see a few hedgehogs wandering around the trees. Lots of lizards will run in your garden and on the roads. The mosquitoes are the only creatures that islanders do not like. People watch the migrations of the storks, and from their movement, people understand the beginning and the end of the summer. There is also a myth about the storks; it is believed that storks saluted the saints of Heybeliada. They go to Heybeliada, turn around, rise up and then continue their migratory path. I was also given the scientific explanation by the islanders: At some spots on the earth the air allows the birds to rise up more easily and the islanders say that Heybeli is one of those spots. They also told me that storks also have their leader and their rules as if they are humans.

Everyone knows each other.Footnote 2 Whenever someone moves to Burgaz, sooner or later the islanders learn of the presence of the new comer. While running to catch the boat, shopping at the grocer, going for a stroll, the islanders always see each other and greet each other. Living in a small island creates more milieux for social interaction and intense intimacy (Baldacchino and Veenendaal 2018). However, its small size also creates more tension and more settings for gossip, which is a common situation of small places, like in villages and small islands (see Loizos and Papataxiarchēs 1991; Delaney 2001; Herzfeld 1988; Baldacchino and Veenendaal 2018; Royle and Brinklow 2018). People are always visible. In Burgaz, whenever you go out of your house, you become social, you see many people on the way. If you happen not to see someone and do not greet them back, then that creates tension. Who you walk with and what you do, is always seen by someone. One of my Sunni Turkish summer informants who came less frequently to the island in her 20s because of the lack of privacy, moved back to Burgaz after she got married and had children, in her 30s. She said: “The young people aged between the ages of 18 and 30 leave the island, because they feel they have no privacy. If they flirt with someone, walk alone with a person (from the opposite sex), or kiss someone, it is either your parents, or your parents’ friends, the grocer or the neighbours, who would see this and tell everyone.” The islanders gossip and also complain about how much gossip is going on the island. Another informant of German descent, whose ancestors moved to Burgaz around 150 years ago, during the Ottoman Empire, said, “Gossip becomes rumors, spreads around, grows and comes back to you as a legend in which you are the hero but in which you actually never played.”

The nature and the weather on the island affect the social life of the islanders. The weather, especially the wind, has the power to dictate the island life. Ferries do not work when there is strong lodos (wind blowing from the south), because the ferries cannot approach the harbours. Ferries also get cancelled when there is a storm, extreme rain or snow. So, the islanders might get stuck on Burgaz, cannot go to their work in the city; and food, newspapers and goods cannot reach Burgaz. For example, on the 2010 New Year, the ferries did not work for three days due to lodos. The bread ran out and people baked their own breads in their houses. On the other hand, Burgazians might be stuck in the city or on another Princes’ Island. Hence, they always have relatives and friends in Istanbul and on the other isles with whom to sleep over. Because of this difficulty, Burgazians are very understanding in hosting their guests who are not from Burgaz due to weather conditions as well as missed last ferries. Islanders are always bound by ferry timetables. The first and the last ferry are the markers of when you can leave the island and by when you should be back.

So, for the permanent inhabitants, the disruption of ferries and being away from the mainland turn the island more into a place of stuckness and prison. For example, health becomes an issue. There is a small health centre with one doctor and a nurse and two pharmacies. When women give birth, people have heart attacks or break their bones; they have to reach the main land. Rapid health boats cannot always reach on time. There have also been several fires on Burgaz and other Princes’ Islands. Some were due to the günübirlikçi (day-trippers) who left glass bottles, cigarettes, or barbeques. Some islanders think that it was a sabotage of people outside of the island, even from the council or the borough to create forest fires in order to build more houses. The fire on Burgaz in October 2003 was traumatic as most of the forest was burnt and many animals died. People become very sad when they remember this event. They cannot walk in the bush anymore and the island looks bare from the ferries. Furthermore, the Princes’ Islands are very near the fault line. After the 1999 earthquake, the summer inhabitants, who have both a summer house and a winter house in Istanbul had the option to leave the island. Some of them either sold their houses or stopped renting, and the house prices fell down. However, the permanent inhabitants did not have such a luxury. Health and safety issues make the islanders cooperate at times of crises and situations when people’s lives might be in danger.

For the summer inhabitants this rupture in the transport is sometimes perceived as a romantic feeling of being stuck on an island and also as an escape from the hectic life of the city. They enjoy the ferry ride to/from the island, which they much prefer to being stuck in the car in Istanbul for a few hours to get to work. Furthermore, they can always go to the city and spend some days in their winter houses. They enjoy the fact that everyone knows each other on the island. So, they feel like going to their village to feel the cosiness of friendship. However, the permanent inhabitants cannot escape: they are stuck on the island, must bear all the gossip and see the same people over and over again.

Yet, for both the permanent and the summer inhabitants, Burgaz is a place of freedom. One of my informants who has been a summer inhabitant since birth and who has now been living on the island permanently for several years said that “the island starts when I put my foot on the ferry from Istanbul and the ferry takes me to the place of freedom.” The islanders highlight that many diverse groups of different ethnic and religious backgrounds live together on the island, that they all have a worship place for their own religion, and that everyone is free in how they want to live their life. They add that if you are not tolerant and embracive towards differences, the island will not accept you. The collective Burgaz identity is based on embodying and valuing its diversity.

The Historical and the Political Context of Diversity

Byzantine and Ottoman Times and the Millet System

During Byzantine times, the Princes’ Islands were inhabited by fishermen and Christian priests (Schild 1999). Later on, the islands were used as prisons for exiled people (Schild 1999; Deleon and Işın 2003). Istanbul and the islands were conquered during Fatih Sultan Mehmet’s reign in 1453 (Behramoglu 2010; Deleon and Işın 2003). The Ottoman population was not divided according to the subjects’ ethnicity or nationality but into millets: Muslims, Rums, Armenians and Jews. The millet system was a legal–religious functional structure in the empire (Sugar 1977). Even though Islam was seen as superior, every millet was autonomous in its religious and legal practice. According to Karpat (1982, 142), the millet system was a constitutional, social and administrative unit based on religious communities. The millet system emerged in the mid-fifteenth century, after the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet II (Karpat 1982, 145). Communities were divided by religion and their religious authorities such as kadis, bishops and rabbis were responsible for their own communities (Mazower 2000, 64). The clergy was powerful and in charge of the church organisation, the schools and the legal and court system as well as church and vakf properties (Karpat 1982, 145). Karpat (1982, 143) argues that millet system emphasised religious unity and superseded the ethnic and linguistic differences. According to Lewis: “In the Empire, there was a Muslim millet, but no Turkish or Arab or Kurdish millets; there were Greek and Armenian and Jewish millets, but as religious communities, not as ethnic nations” (Lewis 1961, 329). Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians, Albanians, Wallachians, Moldavians, Ruthenians, Croatians, Caramanians, Syrians, Melkites Arabs were registered under the Greek millet; Armenians, Syrians, Chaldaeans, Copts, Georgians and Abyssinians were registered under the Armenian Millet (Ormanian 1955, 61 cited in Karpat 1982, 146). The Empire did not aim to convert people to Islam (Mazower 2000, 58; Anderson 2008b). However, this tolerance towards different religions was opportunistic and functional. As long as Christians paid their taxes, they were self-governing within their communities (Mazower 2000, 58). There was discrimination between Christians and Muslims. Christians were treated as second-class in comparison with Muslims. As Christians did not perform military service, they paid more taxes. Thus, in order to profit from being Muslim, some Christians and non-believers converted to Islam (Mazower 2000, 57). Nonethelesss, in that period, 80% of the population in Ottoman Europe was Christian (Mazower 2000, 58).

By the seventeenth century, the population of the Princes’ Islands was mostly Rum (Deleon and Işın 2003, 149). Likewise, during the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and in the early years of the Turkish Republic, the majority of Burgaz islanders were Rum (Greek Orthodox minority in Turkey). Starting from the period of Westernisation from the nineteenth century onwards, French, British and Ottoman elites used the islands as resorts (Deleon and Işın 2003, 154–155). The Austrian Catholic Chapel and the adjacent residence for nuns and priests were built in 1905 on Burgaz (Tuğlacı 1992, 267–268). Germans, who worked under the Ottoman Empire as gardeners and architects, as well as Askenazi Jews, who migrated from northern and eastern parts of Europe to Ottoman lands, bought property on the island to use as summer resorts.

Emergence of Modern Nation States: Homogenisation, Population Exchange and the Treaty of Lausanne

While the population of Burgaz was getting more diverse, the period between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century was characterised by the creation of “homogenous” modern nations (Hirschon 2003, 3) through the construction of a unified national identity against external and internal others. As an outcome of the violence between Greeks and Turks during the Turkish War of Independence of 1921–22 in Asia Minor, both countries agreed on the compulsory exchange of populations to bring a cessation of hostility between these “unmixing people” (Hirschon 2003, 4). Ismet Paşa wanted to have a complete population exchange both because, the Great Powers were intervening in Turkish foreign policies in terms of dealing with the minority issues and because this would bring a more homogenous population (Oran 2003, 99). However, he wanted to exclude the Turkish minority of Western Thrace in Greece from the population exchange and instead to ask for a plebiscite in the region (Oran 2003, 100). Similarly, Venizelos wanted Greeks to remain in “Constantinople” as a reminder of the Megali Idea and to prevent the need for the Rum Patriarchate to be relocated from Istanbul to Greece (Oran 2003, 99). As a compromise between Inönü’s and Venizelos’ aims, the Rums of Bozcaada, Gökçeada and Istanbul (whose total number exceeded 100,000) and the Muslims of Western Thrace (numbered about 124,000) in Greece were excluded from the compulsory exchange of populations (Akgönül 2004; Bahcheli 1990; Oran 2003; Mazower 2000; Hirschon 2003).

The population exchange between Turkey and Greece and the rights of the remaining minorities formed a part of the Treaty of Lausanne. The Pact of Lausanne signed on 30 January 1923 agreed that religion would be the criterion of nationality, so that the Muslims of Greece would count as “Turks” and were sent to Turkey and that the Orthodox of Turkey would count as “Greeks” and be sent to Greece. For instance, in Crete and Macedonia all the Muslims were considered to be “Turks” regardless of their ethnicity or language (Güven 2006, 107). As Cowan (2008) argues, despite the fluidity and the multiplicity of identities of the people, their identities were ethnically and nationally fixed at the moment of deportation. 400,000 Muslim-Turks left Greece and 900,000 Rums left Turkey (Zürcher 1993, 171). However, Greece received a total of 1.2 million refugees after the Asia Minor Catastrophe following the defeat of the Greek army in Izmir in 1922 (Oran 2003, 100). The immigrants of both countries had to leave everything behind (e.g. properties, friends, jobs) and were not welcomed in their new country (Oran 2003). Many of the new comers to Greece spoke Turkish and they were not considered “fully Greek” by the Greeks (Hirschon 1989); they were “Turkish seeds” (Mazower 2005, 360). The population exchange between Turkey and Greece in 1923 was a homogenisation project which had significant consequences for the displaced people as well as for the remaining internal others—the minorities—in these two countries (Keyder 2003). The outcomes of the population exchange were worse than expected (Oran 2003, 101), because it demonstrated that the “other” had to be sent away (Hirschon 2003, 10) and it reinforced the sense of otherness for the remaining minorities in each nation (Güven 2006, 108).

Thus, the Treaty of Lausanne turned the non-Muslim Ottoman millets—Armenians, Rums and Jews—into recognised minorities in modern Turkey; nevertheless, linguistic and ethnic differences (Kurds, Zazas, Laz) and religious denominations (Alevis) among the Muslims remained unrecognised and were subject to Turkish Sunni Muslim domination (Çarkoǧlu and Bilgili 2011). In the Treaty of Lausanne, non-Muslims were given minority status in Turkey and Turkish government agreed to assure the protection of life and liberty of all its citizens, including the minorities (Turlington 1924, 700), while the Muslims in Greece were given a minority status in Greece (Huseyinoglu 2009). Therefore, Rums, Armenians and Jews legally counted as minorities of the Turkish government. This implied that the logic and the bureaucracy of the millet system of the Ottoman Empire was incorporated in the Treaty of Lausanne and persisted in recognition of non-Muslims as minorities in the Turkish Republic. The Rum, Armenian and Jewish millets of the Ottoman Empire were now the Rum, Armenian and Jewish minorities of the Turkish Republic.

Turkification and Homogenisation Through Domestic and Foreign Policies

Restrictive domestic and foreign policies during the building of the Modern Turkish Republic formed a part of the homogenisation and the Turkification of the nation and impacted both recognised and non-recognised minorities in Turkey. This Turkification, unification and homogenisation was political, legal, economic, cultural and also pedagogical. Inspired by Western European liberalism and following secular and national ideologies, the government was centralised and authoritarian (Zürcher 1993, 176). With Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as the first president and Ismet Inönü as the first prime minister, the Republican People’s Party (RPP, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) in Turkish) came into power in 1923 (Zürcher 1993, 174). Both were former members of the CUP, Committee of Union and Progress among the Young Turks (Akdeniz and Göker 2011, 319). For instance, Muslim law was replaced by Swiss, French and Italian law; Arabic script changed to Latin alphabet; Islamic clothes like the fez (for men) and the veil (for women) were banned (Özyürek 2006, 14). These modernist and European reforms formed the foundations of Kemalism, an ideology named after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which had six principles: nationalism, republicanism, statism, populism, revolutionarism and secularism (Özyürek 2006, 14).

The CHP government implemented policies of “Turkification” which was the process of unifying the Turkish nation by creating a Turkish bourgeois class with a stronger socio-economic power. The Turkish government tried to Turkify the bureaucratic system by following a nationalist approach during industrialisationFootnote 3 (Güven 2006); between November, 1922 and March 1923, 110 Rum and 21 Armenian enterprises were closed (Güven 2006, 109); people were also encouraged to consume “Turkish products” (Güven 2006, 112); enterprises started to replace non-Muslim employees with Muslim onesFootnote 4 (Kuyucu 2005; Aktar 2021). Thus, Jews, Rums and other non-Muslims started to emigrate from 1934 onwards. 9000 Rums emigrated from Turkey in 1934.

Furthermore, Atatürk and Kemalists took on board Ziya Gökalp’s “one nation, one education” theory and in 1924 the education system was unified under one code of practice (Kaplan 2006, 41) through unitarian nationalist education policies (Tevhid-i Tedrisat Kanunu in 1924) (see Kaya 2013, 108). To build Sunni–Muslim–Turkish identity, unrecognised Muslim minorities, such as the Kurds were denied education in mother tongue, and places and surnames were Turkified (Kaya 2013, 108). The Latin alphabet started to be used; Persian and Arabic words were taken out of the language and new Turkish words were created from Turkic root words. These changes aimed to break the Ottoman connection and hence strip the language from Persian and Arabic words as well as changing the Arabic alphabet to the Latin one. This Turkification of the language also had further nationalistic consequences. There were campaigns such as “Speak Turkish!”—which aimed to discourage the non-Muslim minorities to speak their native languages such as Rumca, Ladino, Armenian, Arabic in public places such as restaurants and theatres in the 1930s (see Güven 2006; Kuyucu 2005; Aktar 2021). Recognised minority schools did not receive enough financial aid and the number of students lessened day by day (Güven 2006).

Ideologies of secularism and nationalism based on Turkish identity had also sever impacts on the non-Turkish Muslims, namely, the Kurds, Zazas and Alevis, who showed resistance to Turkification, and the centralisation of the state. Bearing in mind that these groups form the majority of the permanent island inhabitants, it is important to understand the complexity and the diversity within the Alevis, Kurds and Zazas in Turkey, and the political oppression they experienced during the building of modern Turkey in the eastern and southern parts of Turkey, notably, Dersim and Solhan, where most of them originate from.

Zazas, Kurds and Alevis are not three distinct groups separated from each other. For instance, Dinç (2018) draws attention to the multilingual community of Dersim, speaking Turkish, Kurdish and Dersimce (also referred to as Zazaki/Dimilki/Kirmancki). Despite Dersim being a multilingual community, its majority is Alevis. To complicate the matters further, Zazaki is also spoken by the people, who originally come from the regions of Dersim and Solhan, in the eastern part of Anatolia, and they separate into Sunni Zaza Kurds and Alevis Zaza Kurds (Kaya 2011; Efe and Forchtner 2015). About half of the Zazas in eastern Turkey are Sunnis/Shafis, and the other half are Alevis (Kaya 2011, 191). While the region surrounding Dersim’s inhabitants are mostly Alevis, those in Solhan and Diyarbekir are Sunni Shafis. These two groups share common Kurdish/Zaza ethnicity and language, however differ greatly by their religions. While the Sunni/Shafi Zaza Kurds follow the orthodox and conservative variant of Islam; Alevis follow the eclectic and syncretic religious practices from Anatolia, synthesizing Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and shamanism and support the secular ideology in opposition to the dominance of Sunni Turkish Islam (Kaya 2011, 191). This opposition rooted in ideological and religious difference created antagonisms between Alevi Zaza Kurds and Sunni Zaza Kurds.

One can trace this difference in history, in the 1925 and 1938 rebellions in the Dersim region. The resistances from the Sunni Kurds and Alevi Kurds against the central government were due to different ideologies: the former group fighting against secularism and Turkification, while the later fighting for secularism, and against Turkification and Sunni dominance. Discontented by the abolition of the caliphate and the repression of Kurdish language, Sunni Kurds rebelled in 1925 but were repressed by the government (Zürcher 1993, 178; Anderson 2008b; Ahmad 2002, 75; Efegil 2011, 27–28). This rebellion also referred as Sheyh Said rebellion took place in eastern Anatolia, in the region covering Elazığ, Bingöl, Diyarbakır, Şanlıurfa, Mardin, and Muş.

Later on, in 1937–38, Alevis in Dersim region resisted the centralisation of government. During the Ottoman times, Dersim used to have an autonomous, feudal mode of self-governance. The Dersim region is made of valleys surrounded by high mountains. Due to its geography, it remained isolated, and hence the inhabitants kept their traditional tribal ways of living (Öz 2008, 130). It was ruled by the sheiks and its economy relied on plunder (Öz 2008, 131) and there were always conflicts between the region’s sheikhs (Öz 2008, 176). During the foundation of the Turkish republic, Dersim’s inhabitants did not change the way they lived. The sheiks and the inhabitants were not registered as tax payers and did not pay taxes (Öz 2008, 135–137). In 1935 and 1936, the Turkish government wanted to take control of the region by building hospitals, roads, government buildings, bridges and schools to “modernise and civilise” the region which aimed to “pacify” and “discipline” the peculiar life in the region (Dinç 2021, 56, 2017, 146). This was contradictory to the ways in which the sheikhs lived their lives, which challenged their authority in Dersim (Öz 2008, 176–177). In 1935, Dersim’s name was Turkified and became Tunceli (Dinç 2017, 146; Efe and Forchtner 2015, 240). In 1937 and 1938, there were conflicts between the sheikhs and government authorities. The sheikhs that were caught were executed (Öz 2008, 180). The conflicts reached their peak in 1937 and 1938, whereupon the army intervened, and destroyed the villages in Dersim (Öz 2008, 194–195; Anderson 2008b; Dinç 2021); 10,000 people died (Öz 2008, 195).

Kaya (2011, 148) reminds that Alevi Zaza Kurds did not join the Sheyh Said rebellion of the Sunni Kurds in 1925, but rather helped the government in suppressing it. Similarly, in the 1937 Dersim uprising of the Alevi Kurds, the Sunni Kurds helped the government to suppress it. Hence, one can see the ideological opposition between the Alevi Kurds and Sunni Kurds in building on modern Turkey and also among the Alevi Zaza Kurds and Sunni Kurds. It is not only an ideological difference, but also seen in the social life and the interactions between these two groups. The Alevis, who come from Erzincan (near Dersim) and the Sunni/Shafi Kurds who migrated from Muş and Ağrı have different social circles. While Alevis from Zaza, Kurdish, Turkish backgrounds, who migrated in the 1940s onwards from Erzincan to the island, hang out with each other and support secularism; the Sunni/Shafi Kurds, who migrated from Muş and Ağrı in the 1980s onwards, follow more orthodox Islam and rather prefer to hang out with each other and Sunni Turks, who practise Islam. It is more common to see Alevis supporting the Republican Party, some the Communist party, some HDP, while the Sunni/Shafi Kurds tend to support the AKP or HDP.

After having outlined the homogenisation and the Turkification process, I would like to indicate the demographic changes on Burgaz in the first decades of the Republic. As the Rums of Istanbul and the Turks in Western Thrace were excluded from the population exchange, the Rums of Burgaz (as an island in Istanbul) stayed on the island and were still in majority. However, during this Turkification process, some government jobs became available on Burgaz. Sunni Muslim families moved to Burgaz to take these jobs, such as working as a police officer; and Sunni Muslim elites also bought properties in Burgaz to use as summer resorts. In the 1930s, Sunni Muslim captains from the Black Sea coast of Turkey, mainly from Ordu and Trabzon, settled in Burgaz for employment reasons. In the 1940s, the island started receiving small-scale migration from Anatolia. Some Alevis from Erzincan came to Burgaz to work temporarily in the summers. Therefore, Burgaz which used to be a “Rum fisherman village” started to be a more diverse place for the remaining Rums, the new non-Muslim and Muslim settlers.

Unlike the calm and peaceful life in Burgaz, the 1930s and 1940s were periods of authoritarian rule in Europe (Zürcher 1993, 193). Salazar in Portugal, Franco in Spain, Metaxas in Greece, Mussolini in Italy (Zürcher 1993, 193–194) and Hitler in Germany were among these authoritarian/fascist leaders. Inspired by these authoritarian/fascist regimes, Inönü was more restrictive than Atatürk (Ahmad 2002, 88; Zürcher 1993, 193). During the Second World War, Turkey was suspicious towards not only the minorities but also the foreigners who worked in the country (Akgönül 2007, 108). ID checks were very frequent and the minorities were taken back to do military service even though they had just returned back from it (Akgönül 2007, 109). In 1939, the law that the minorities would be taken to do military service was passed (Akgönül 2007, 99, 406), whereas before that time, they had not been allowed to do military service, or to be in the army. In 1941, non-Muslims were taken in groups to do military service separately from Muslims (Akgönül 2007, 99, 406). The CHP (Republican Party) government of Inönü passed the Varlık Vergisi (Wealth Tax) law in 1942 and explained that Varlık Vergisi aimed to redistribute the capital that was unequally and unfairly distributed during World War II (Ökte 1951, 15 cited in Güven 2006, 135; Kuyucu 2005, 370). As non-Muslims were well ahead in status, wealth and business; this tax aimed to weaken their position and increase Muslims’ wealth. Dönmes (non-Muslims, mostly Jews, who had converted to Islam) were supposed to pay double and non-Muslims had to pay ten times more (Güven 2006, 139, 141). If they were late to pay Varlık Vergisi, the interest was high, and if they could not pay, they had to go to work camps (see Güven 2006; Kuyucu 2005; Aktar 2021), which counted as military service where they built roads and government buildings in order to compensate for their unpaid tax. From 1943 onwards, non-Muslims started to sell their property and enterprises. Because of the economic restrictions in Turkey and following the building of Israeli state, in 1948–49, 30,000 Jews emigrated to Israel (Bali 2003, 528 cited in Güven 2006, 146).

Registered in 1946 the Democratic Party started off as a reaction against the policies of the Republican Party (the CHP) (Zürcher 1993, 221). In contrast to the Kemalists, who had military, commercial or bureaucratic backgrounds, the democrats had more modest backgrounds, some without a university education (Zürcher 1993, 231). The democrats appealed to the farmers and peasants who formed the majority of the population (Anderson 2008a; Zürcher 1993, 234); they built new mosques and allowed the opening of religious schools (Zürcher 1993, 224; Anderson 2008a). They encouraged free markets and liberalised the economy (Zürcher 1993, 234).

The minorities of Burgaz also got affected by the treatment of Inönü and Menderes governments. Varlık Vergisi of the Inönü government made them lose a significant amount of their economic capital. Nonetheless, the liberalisation of the economy and free markets of the Democratic Party worked in favour of the minorities. For instance, the Jewish community of Istanbul became wealthier and started to rent or buy properties in Burgaz. Furthermore, during the 1940s and 1950s, there were internal migration from eastern villages of Turkey to big cities, like Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir (Keyder 1999; Çelik 2005). The migrants from eastern villages, who came to Istanbul found jobs on the Princes’ Islands. Similarly in 1940s and 1950s, Burgaz started to receive migrants from Erzincan, a city in the eastern part of Anatolia. Zaza Alevis from Erzincan worked in Burgaz in summers as menial workers. They helped the Rum fishermen, worked as gardeners for the summer inhabitants, waiters and helpers in restaurants, helped in maintaining and fixing the Rum Orthodox churches and drove horse-carts. For instance, many Alevis worked for the Garipi Monastery in Ay Nikola area in Burgaz. They painted the walls of the church and refurbished different parts of the church and the monastery. The priest at that time allowed the Alevis to construct accommodation places for themselves in Ay Nikola while they were working. Slowly, Alevis made small houses in Ay Nikola, then settled and brought their families. These houses grew bigger and bigger, while more family members moved to Burgaz.

Worsening Greek and Turkish Relations: 6–7 September 1955 Pogrom and 1964 Expulsion of the Rums with Greek Citizenship

According to Güven (2006), in early 1950s Turkey, Greece and NATO maintained good relations. However, due to the Cyprus issues in the mid-1950s, their relations worsened and this had a great impact on the situations of minorities in Turkey and Greece (Güven 2006, 162–163). Greek and Turkish Cypriots, who lived rather in peace, started to see each other as enemies, due to the British propaganda in 1950s (Akar and Demir 1994). In 1955, Greek-Cypriot national activism began. Greek Cypriots and Greece had been supporting Enosis, the movement that aimed to free Cyprus from the British rule and to unite it with Greece (Güven 2006; Kuyucu 2005). Inter-communal violence took place between Greek and Turkish Cypriots. When the nationalist organisation EOKA started attacking British officials and Turkish Cypriots in Cyprus, BritainFootnote 5 invited the Turkish and Greek governments to the London conference on 29 August 1955 to solve the problems (Güven 2006, 196). Before the London Conference, Menderes and the media spread the word about a potential massacre against the Turks in Cyprus, thus creating more tension in Turkey, provoking anxiety and hatred. Rums were assumed to be on the Greek side (Kuyucu 2005, 376).

On the 6th of September 1955, Istanbul Ekspres newspaper, published the news that Atatürk’s house and the Turkish embassy in Thessalonica had been bombed (Kuyucu 2005, 361). This triggered riots against non-Muslims in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara. The riots were organised by Menderes government (Mills 2010, 119) but they did not expect the escalated consequences of these riots, in the ways in which they turned into such destruction and vandalism. According to the Istanbul Consulate reports, the riots were initiated by organised groups of people (Istanbul Consulate reports 1955 cited in Güven 2006, 26, 28; Kuyucu 2005, 362). The rumours of riots started to spread before the 6th of September 1955. The non-Muslims were warned by their Muslim neighbours not to go in the town in Istanbul on the 6th of September (Güven 2006, 96). While the attacks were being carried out, the police men were quite passive because they were told not to stop the attacks unless people were in danger of dying (Yassıada court and Istanbul Consulate reports cited in Güven 2006, 33–35; Kuyucu 2005, 362). The bombings in Thessalonica, the organised groups in Istanbul and the discussion of Cyprus at the London Conference combined to mobilise Muslims to exert violence on non-Muslims in Istanbul. Muslims attacked the stores, houses, places of worship and schools of non-Muslims; and they stole or broke and destroyed anything they found (Güven 2006, 29). Between 11 and 15 people died (Güven 2006, 55).

Menderes (Turkish prime minister at that time) claimed that the attacks were spontaneous (Güven 2006, 14). Later on, he contradicted himself and said that it was planned by the Communists (Güven 2006, 14). Scholars like Dosdoğru and Toprak and the Tarih ve Toplum institution accused the government of organising the riots (Kuyucu 2005, 363). During the Yassıada trial, Menderes and his government were alleged to be guilty of the riotsFootnote 6 and were prosecuted (Kuyucu 2005, 362). Güven states that the Democratic Party (DP) government, MIT (Milli Istihbarat Servisi, National Intelligence Organisation), the Kıbrıs Türktür Cemiyeti (Cyprus is Turkish Organisation) and the student union organisations were responsible for organising the riots (Güven 2006, xi). Todorova (2004, 4) argues that people are not gullible, passive and open to manipulation of the government, “why do people hear the message at a particular time” should be analysed. Similarly, Kuyucu stresses that rather than distinguishing between the state and the public, and blaming the government for causing riots, this should be seen as a result of the economic, social and political context that motivated people at that particular time and as a consequence of the othering process of the minorities during the creation of the nation state of Turkey (Kuyucu 2005, 363).

It could seem that the Democratic Party had a relatively more democratic attitude towards the minorities than the Inönü government. For instance, they ended Varlɪk Vergisi (Güven 2006, 150) and the restrictions on minority schools and education (Güven 2006, 156). However, the disputes over Cyprus brought an end to the DP’s tolerance towards minorities (Güven 2006, 162). The September 1955 riots against non-Muslims in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara were an attack on the socioeconomic power of the non-Muslims, which made them feel like others within. The 6–7 September events were mostly a “shock” for the minorities (Akgönül 2007). While these riots took place in different parts of Istanbul (including the Princes’ Islands), Ankara and Izmir, Burgaz was not affected. The islanders of Burgaz protected the island from the rioters by not letting them enter the island to cause destructions. Even though no destruction took place in Burgaz, the fact that some of the Burgaz islanders had houses and stores being attacked in Istanbul, and their friends’ and relatives’ properties destroyed created anxiety and fear (see Chap. 7 for Burgaz islanders’ memories of the pogrom).

In 1957, minorities still voted for the Democratic Party and the DP won the elections again (Akgönül 2007, 211). Akgönül relates the result of the election to the fact that the responsible people for the 6–7 September events were still not known, and thus the DP government had not yet been accused of being responsible for the riots until the Yassɪada trials in 1960s (Akgönül 2007, 211). Furthermore, the minorities were still cautious towards the Republican Party because of the Wealth Tax (1942) and the Turkification policies of the Inönü government. The DP had non-Muslim MPs in the government until the 1957 election (Akgönül 2007, 211). Akgönül compares the population census in 1950 and 1960 and points out that the Orthodox population in 1950 was 86,625, and in 1960, 106,612 (Akgönül 2007, 221–223). Although the 6–7 September events did not trigger an immediate emigration of the Rums from Turkey; it was a big crack in the wall and a loss of trust towards the Muslims.

The DP triggered its own failure. On the one hand, the economic developments were done too quickly and were not sustainable: the agricultural growth focused on extending the area of farming and the use of machinery, but was sustained with improved agricultural techniques (Zürcher 1993, 228). With the help of good weather in the early years of the DP, while the harvest was extensive, the bad weather brought again the need for import, such as wheat. The economic growth dropped from 13%, to 4% in 1955 (Zürcher 1993, 228). Inflation went from 3% in 1950 to 20% in 1957 (Zürcher 1993, 239). The financial problems were not solved by a readjustment of taxing, instead extensive money was borrowed from the US, European countries, the IMF and the Central Bank (Zürcher 1993, 228–229). The external debt reached $1.5 billion by 1960 (Zürcher 1993, 239). On the other hand, Menderes regime grew more and more authoritarian, with increased control of the press and by expelling people who were critical of him from their positions in the party (Zürcher 1993, 230). With the worsening of the economy, inflation and authoritarian tendencies, Menderes kept losing support from the intellectuals, bureaucrats and the military (Zürcher 1993, 230). In 27 May 1960, the army overthrew the DP government. They were accused of being responsible for the 6–7 September events (Akgönül 2007, 246, Bahcheli 1990, 173), and of corruption and violation of the constitution (Zürcher 1993, 260). Vice-President Adnan Menderes, Minister of Finance Hasan Polatkan, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Fatin Rüştü Zorlu were executed (Ahmad 2002, 164). In 1961, Inönü and his CHP government were elected again (Akgönül 2007, 248).

The political tensions between Turkey, Greece and Cyprus affected to a great extent the situation of the Rum minority in Turkey as well as in Burgaz. When Cyprus got its independence in 1960, Makarios became the president and Fazıl Küçük, the vice-president. The constitution was based on a bi-communal government. In 1963, Greek Cypriot nationalists were oppressing the Turkish Cypriots (Akgönül 2007, 256). Makarios wanted to lessen the power of the Turkish Cypriots and increase the power of the Greek Cypriots by changing from a bi-communal system to majority rule. In order to stop the oppression against the Turkish Cypriots, the Turkish government “warned” the Greek government by “punishing” the Rums in Istanbul (Akgönül 2007, 252–254, 263, 267). In daily language, the term Yunanlı was used for the Greeks of Greece, and Rum for the Greek-Orthodox minority of Turkey and Kıbrıslı Rum for the Greek Cypriots (Akgönül 2007, 252). The Rums of Turkey were divided into two categories: Rums with Turkish citizenship (Türk uyruklu Rumlar) and Rums with Greek citizenship (Yunan uyruklu Rumlar). When the Kıbrıslı Rumlar (Greek Cypriots) exerted violence against the Kıbrıslı Türkler (Turkish Cypriots), the Rums of Turkey, including the Patriarchate, tried to give the message to the Turkish government that the Rums of Turkey were different from Kıbrıslı Rumlar (Akgönül 2007, 258). For instance, in the media, the Patriarchate constantly reprimanded the atrocities of the Greek Cypriots against the Turkish Cypriots (Akgönül 2007, 258). However, the political tension between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus started to blur the distinction between the Rums of Turkey, and Yunanlılar and Kıbrıslı Rumlar (Akgönül 2007, 252). The Rums of Turkey with Greek citizenship were blamed for helping the Greek Cypriots economically (Akgönül 2007, 267) and also to be on the Greek side (Akgönül 2007, 252).

The Turkish government held responsible the Greek government for the changes that Makarios implemented and in return, did not renew the Seyrisefain pact, which was signed between Turkey and Greece in 1930, and which gave residence and free movement to Greek citizens in Turkey (Akgönül 2007, 86–87; Alexandris 2019, 142). With this pact, the Rums, who had migrated to Greece during the population exchange, and who had become Greek citizens were allowed to settle back and work in Turkey (Akgönül 2007, 87). Work permits, freedom of movement and residence of Rums with Greek citizenship were cancelled (Akar and Demir 1994). In March 1964, the Inönü government decided to expel the Rums with Greek citizenship (Akgönül 2007, 257, 409). Those who were expelled were given 48 hours to leave Turkey with $20 and 20 kilos of luggage (Örs 2019; Kaliber 2019). They were not allowed to withdraw money from their accounts or sell their property (Kaliber 2019, 52). Rums who wanted to sell their properties had to get permission from the Turkish government (Akgönül 2007, 318). Many did not have the time to sell their properties and just left. If the taxes on these assets were left unpaid for more than ten years, the Turkish government took over their property (Alexandris 2019, 146; Akar and Demir 1994, 160).

Furthermore, this expulsion would make the Rums of Greek citizenship lose their jobs thus enabling the Turks to take their places (Akgönül 2007, 261, 265). This would also “solve” the unemployment problems of the immigrants from the Anatolian villages to cities (Akgönül 2007, 265). Furthermore, non-Muslims were aimed to be excluded from the labour market. In 1934, by law number 2007, non-Muslims were not allowed to take some public job positions (Katsanos 2019, 83). This heightened up in 1960s along with the pogrom and the expulsion of the Rums and many more non-Muslim enterprises were closed and non-Muslims were exempt from even regular jobs like shoemaking and tailoring (Katsanos 2019, 98). The Turkish government also wanted to control the flow of the Rums’ capital and the properties (Akgönül 2007, 318). In 1935, the Law of Foundations declared all foundations, including those of minorities, to be under the authority of the General Directorate of the Foundations (GDF) (Soner 2010, 30). In 1936, GDF required all foundations to register their unmoveable properties (Akgönül 2007, 319). Some Rum foundation properties were given by the Sultan’s edict in the Ottoman times (Soner 2010, 30; Akgönül 2007, 319) or were donated by Rums, so these properties were not registered. In 1972, when GDF requested the registration documents from the foundations of the minorities (Akgönül 2007, 319), the foundations and properties of the minorities that were not on the register became the property of the government (Akgönül 2007, 320).

Inönü knew that the cancellation of the pact would have an impact on the Rums with Turkish citizenship as well, because for years, the Rums with Turkish citizenship and the Rums with Greek citizenship intermarried and formed close friendship and family bonds (Akar and Demir 1994, 14). The 1965 population consensus affirmed not only that 11,000 Rums of Greek citizenship left, but that they had taken their families with them; 30,000 Rums of Turkish citizenship left as well (Akgönül 2007, 284) adding up to around 40,000–42,000 Rums (Themopolou 2019, 124). After 1964, the Rums of Turkish citizenship started to get very uncomfortable and lost their trust in Muslims. Enosis activism from 1963 onwards (Akgönül 2007, 300), the murder of Cypriot Turks on Christmas day in 1963 (Oran 2003, 104, Kaliber 2019, 46) and the Greek Cypriot attacks on Turkish villages in Geçitkale and Boğaziçi in Cyprus on 15 November 1967 (Akgönül 2007, 301) created anxieties for the Rum minority in Turkey (Oran 2003, 104; Akgönül 2007, 301). In contrast to the 6–7 September 1955 riots, the invasion of the Turkish army in Cyprus in 1974 did not mobilise crowds to take action against the Rums (Akgönül 2007, 317). However, the previous events had already scarred the Rums, whom kept leaving the country of their own accord.

Some of the Rums of Burgaz left their properties and left the island; which later became properties of the government; some of them sold their shops and properties at low prices to the Alevis, who were their helpers and waiters for years. Therefore, the Alevis, who had been saving money while working as employees under Rums bought their properties and shops. From 1980s onwards, the change of demographics on the island became more visible. Many shops and restaurants were run by Alevis; the Ay Nikola neighbourhood became an Alevi neighbourhood. I heard two conflicting views of this change of property. When I was having tea with a few secular Sunni Muslim summer inhabitants in one of the coffee shops, one female informant said, “they [newcomers, mainly Kurdish and Alevi Zazas] bought these houses with our money,” stressing the fact that the permanent inhabitants overcharged the summer inhabitants, which helped them to buy property. On another occasion, a Sunni Muslim summer inhabitant told me that “I have seen how much they [new comers, mainly Kurdish and Alevi Zazas] have been working since they moved to the island. They have deserved every bit of the house they own.” This shift to property ownership also triggered a shift in the economic status of the Alevi and the Sunni communities in Burgaz.

1980s Coup and Its Aftermath

The instability of the Turkish government did not provide grounds for living with peace of mind. The fights between leftists and rightists in the late 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the intervention of the army in 1971 and 1980 (Akgönül 2007, 294) made all the citizens of Turkey uncomfortable. But, surely, the minorities and the left were more prone to be victimised. First of all, the 1980 coup brought a halt to the lives of Turkish citizens. The military council brought restrictions to voluntary organisations, associations especially the leftist ones (Șimșek 2004, 111–112).

Nonetheless, the political climate in Turkey started to change significantly from 1980s onwards. It was under Özal’s government that liberation started both economically and politically. Like his contemporaries Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Özal promoted neoliberalism, privatisation, free-markets and economic liberalism (Zürcher 1993, 301; Anderson 2008b). He promoted Islamic revivalism and removed the ban on using Kurdish in private (Anderson 2008a; Zürcher 1993, 305). In 1981, Özal removed the blockade that concerned the properties of the Rums who were expelled in 1964 (Akgönül 2007, 411; Bahcheli 1990, 184). In 1988, he passed the law that enabled Rums to reclaim back their properties (Akgönül 2007, 411). He also removed the visa prohibition on these Rums (Akgönül 2007, 411). Even though, this liberation took place, still the Rums did not want to come back due to what they had been through during the previous decades in Turkey (Akgönül 2007, 327).

From 1980s onwards, feminism, human rights activism, Islamism, environmentalism and Kurdish and Alevi activism were among the social movements in the country. The PKK, Partiya Karkeran Kurdistan (the Kurdistan Worker’s Party), started a guerrilla act against the government for a free state for the Kurds in 1984 (Zürcher 1993, 313). During successive clashes between the PKK and the Turkish army, many people lost their lives or were displaced (Zürcher 1993, 313). Following the forced migration, evacuation of villages by the military, the pressure of the PKK and the ongoing clashes between the military and the PKK, many Kurds migrated from their villages in south-east to big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana (Çelik 2005, 139–140). In addition to the political tensions, there was also economic scarcity in the southeast. In the 1990s, Sunni Kurds from south-eastern Turkey moved to Burgaz to undertake menial labour (such as driving horse carts, waiting tables and gardening) having been driven from their villages in Muş and Ağrı by Kurdish insurgency, poor economic conditions and kinship tensions.

2000s and Onwards: The AKP, Its Democratisation Packages and Their Failure

The EU required Turkey to recognise social diversity, to improve the treatment of the recognised minorities and to recognise both the non-recognised Muslim and non-Muslim ethnic, religious and denominational groups. In order to meet the criteria to become a member of the EU, the AKP worked on implementing the so-called democratic policies. In 2011, Erdoğan declared that the minorities’ foundations could claim back their confiscated properties (Abanoz 2011). Erdoğan worked on reopening the Greek Orthodox Seminary in Halki, in Heybeliada, one of the Princes’ Islands of Istanbul (Soner 2010). Erdogan initiated Jewish and Armenian opening, such as reconstructing places of worship and offering condolences for the pains that the Jews and Armenians suffered from (Aktürk 2018). This positive attitude of the AKP towards the non-Muslims enabled them to gain votes from the non-Muslims, especially from Greeks and Armenians (Soner 2010). However, the Jewish minority remained suspicious (Soner 2010, 28) due to tensions between Israel and Turkey and Erdoğan’s anti-Zionist attitudes and rage in Davos in 2009. Furthermore, the secularists were also apprehensive about the reopening of the Seminary as an autonomous theological institution because this would also allow Muslims to open religious institutions and pursue religious activities without the control of the state (Soner 2010, 38). The anti-secular and authoritarian acts of Erdogan in the last years also made the non-Muslim minorities turn away from the AKP. Secularists became anxious when the AKP challenged the building blocks of Kemalism: a strong secular army to ensure secularism, a lack of public expression of religion and an emphasis on a unified Turkish identity denying the existence of a Kurdish identity (Akdeniz and Göker 2011, 321). Erdoğan reduced military autonomy (Akdeniz and Göker 2011, 326), and opened a dialogue with the Kurds; and with the passing of the referendum in 12 September 2010, the power of the governing party in the legal constitution increased. While these acts were seen as democratic initiatives by the EU and the liberals in Turkey; they were perceived as threats to the unity of the nation and to secularism by the secularists in Turkey.

Prior to and during the fieldwork years (2009–2010), the discourses of differences in Turkey revolved around three issues: the relationship between secularism and Islamism; the recognition of Kurds and Alevis and the current situation of non-Muslim minorities. During my fieldwork, the AKP came up with “democratisation packages” by pointing out the faults of the previous Kemalist and secular regimes and claiming to be correcting the mistakes of the previous governments. However, their attempts at democracy were criticised that these democratisation packages were not implemented (Efegil 2011; Soner 2010; Soner and Toktaş 2011; Karakaya-Stump 2018; Bardakçı 2015; Özpek and Mutluer 2016; Kardaş and Balcı 2016; Toktamış 2019; Kayhan Pusane 2014; Aktürk 2018). They were “empty promises” to gain votes in order to become an autocratic political power and to satisfy the international opinion (Head 2011; Çakır 2008) to “look democratic” rather than “being democratic.” In Chap. 8, I elaborate and scrutinise the failure of these democratisation packages.

Furthermore, the financial crises in 2001 in the country due to the bankruptcy led to increased interest rate and inflation; the stock market fell and the Turkish lira devalued. This has made it difficult to keep a flat/house in Burgaz for the summer inhabitants in Burgaz. Among the wealthy summer inhabitants, some of the Jewish residents preferred to go to the south of Turkey for vacations or to spend time in Istanbul, rather than renting flats on the island. Furthermore, the worsening relationship between Israel and Turkey, as indicated by the bombings of synagogues in Istanbul in 2003 and the Mavi Marmara incident in 2009, made the Jewish community feel ill at ease. Some of them stopped renting houses or sold their properties in Burgaz. Even though the Jews of Burgaz still feel relatively safe in Burgaz, their discomfort continues. Following the 2008 financial crisis in Europe, especially in Greece, some Rums who had left with their accord and some Greeks moved to Burgaz to live during the summer time. On the other hand, from 2000 onwards, Armenians from Kınalıada, another of the Islands, moved to Burgaz. They did not like the increase of day-trippers and picnickers back in Kınalıada. From 2000 onwards, workers from Central Asia started to come to the island for temporary work such as taking care of the horses and helping grocers to deliver goods to island customers. Currently, Burgaz is home to more than twenty different ethnic and religious groups from different socio-economic backgrounds.

Methodology and Entering the Field

As a trained anthropologist, I believed that ethnography was the valid methodology to understand what occurs on the ground (Cowan 2006), and to investigate what people actually do. I focused on the “multicultural” as an adjective to describe plurality on the ground—in opposition to multiculturalism as a political project, that is, as top-down approaches (characteristic for policies, politicians, political theorists) that focused on how people should live together and what policies or laws should be used in order to manage diversity.

I took the boat from the Anatolian side (Bostancı) of Istanbul to Burgaz on 1 July 2009 to begin my fieldwork, as a 25-year-old, single woman, nervous yet excited about how I would manage to meet and socialise with islanders from diverse class, linguistic, ethnic and religious backgrounds. In order to build relationships with individuals belonging to various groups, I relied on various aspects of my upbringing and multiple identities, though at the same time it was difficult for me to negotiate and challenge these. Being Turkish, and a native Turkish speaker, and having grown up in Istanbul until the age of 21 were advantages for me undertaking anthropology in this region; however, I was not a Burgazlı, which automatically made me an “outsider.” Burgazlı possess a strong sense of belonging to the island, and I needed to work hard to be accepted by them. Furthermore, even though I was born and registered as a Turkish Muslim (of Sunni sect), a subject belonging to the majority, I was still a göçmen, a migrant from the Balkans, a post-Ottoman production, a production of Balkan conflicts, migrations and love. My grandfather from my father’s side, Recep, was a refugee, who fled from Kırcaali/Kardzhali in Bulgaria to Edirne in Turkey in the first years of the republic, alone at the age of 14. His wife, Neriman, whose name I carry on, had her parents migrate from Komotini/Gümülcine in Greece to Turkey, before the population exchange in 1923. My mother’s grandmother was an Albanian Muslim, born in Tirana. She fell in love with an Ottoman Turkish medical doctor, who brought her to Istanbul. My maternal grandmother, Perihan, had ancestors from Central Anatolia, Niğde. These historical and geographical traces were revealed in my slant, Central Asian–shaped, blue eyes and light brown/blond hair, which was told to me many times in Turkey in the form of “you must be a göçmen, where do your ancestors come from? Balkans?” and in Europe “you don’t look like Turkish.” I grew up in a secular family, whose cosmopolitan world view and values were more important than being Turkish or Muslim. I had acquired knowledge of Islamic practices and values from the obligatory religious classes in my schools. Sometimes, I had much less common with practising Sunni Muslims, with whom I shared the same ethnicity and religious categorisation, and I had to confront this lack of knowledge. On the other hand, the French and the American high schools I attended in Istanbul are where minorities choose to educate their children. So, the fact that we went to the same schools created a sense of familiarity between us. I relied heavily on the languages I speak to gain access to and the trust of my informants. Even though everyone speaks Turkish, people also use their native languages within their family and community.

Apart from Turkish, I spoke French and Spanish with my Jewish informants, who speak Ladino (a mixture of old Portuguese and Spanish) or French at home. I spoke RumcaFootnote 7 with the Rums. I began learning Zazaki to converse with my Zaza Alevi informants. I spoke French, Turkish, or English with the Austrians, Italians and Germans, depending on which language they preferred. After my fieldwork, I learnt Italian (through my husband), Danish (as we live in Copenhagen) and Swedish (as I work and teach in Sweden). While growing up and playing together, the islanders picked up each other’s languages, so that many of them speak Rumca, Italian, Armenian, French, or Ladino. Being a polyglot made me feel very close to the islanders, in a similar way that they felt closer to me. It made me realise that being multilingual was also a form of symbolic capital for the islanders.

In order to understand how the islanders live together, I lived on the island and conducted 14 months of ethnography (July 2009–August 2010). I used participant observation, casual chats with the islanders, and 44 semi-structured interviews. My project received two ethical clearances, one before going on fieldwork and the second one in the final examination of my doctoral thesis. I have followed the Ethical Guidelines of the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and of the American Anthropological AssociationFootnote 8 regarding the consent and the anonymity of my informants and sharing my findings with them. When I first got to Burgaz, I introduced myself as the PhD student in anthropology and received their consent in writing about the island life in my thesis and publications. I started attending the Orthodox mass on Sunday with my Rum Burgazlı friend from my French middle school. She introduced me to the organiser of the church and to her friends and acquaintances from different ethno-religious backgrounds, who socialised in mixed social clubs. Every new person I met, introduced me to another one, which helped me greatly. I learned about demographic changes on the island and how Burgaz islanders live together and represent their conviviality through snowballing and chained relationships by attending places of worship, the two social clubs (where people swim, suntan, play games and socialise) and the embroidery class for women. I was invited to join meals at restaurants and have tea and coffee at coffee shops and patisseries. The islanders also invited me into their homes. During the first eight or nine months of my fieldwork, I collected their narratives in the form of unstructured interviews, taking notes in my ethnographic diary every day. During the last five or six months, after the islanders had got used to my presence and felt more comfortable in confiding their life stories, I recorded the interviews. I have used pseudonyms throughout the book to keep their anonymity. I also did production interviews conducted with “exclusive informants” in Bruun’s (2016) terms. I interviewed the authors of books written by Burgazlı (Engin Aktel and Robert Schild) as well as the directors, scenarists and the actors in the documentaries shut by the islanders (Nedim Hazar, Nilufer Uzunoglu, Tilbe Saran) and received their consent in using their names in my publications. Building on media ethnography, media, communication and cultural studies methods (Pertierra 2018; Barker 2012; Lewis 2008; Hansen and Machin 2013), I have explored the islanders’ narratives, representations and the discourses on diversity in their cultural productions pertaining to different genres, such as documentaries, novels and memoires. I aimed for a polyphonic representation of the islanders and paid attention to the metaphors, allegories and terms they use to understand their descriptions and reflections on conviviality, which showed diversity (see Chap. 3). Nonetheless, my ethnography, like other ethnographies, are limited to my perceptions and interpretations of what I have seen, observed and experienced (Candea 2007; Geertz 1973; Clifford 1986). At the end of my fieldwork, I made two public presentations on Burgaz, to the Burgaz islanders, when I presented them my raw fieldwork data and thanked them for making me a part of their life.

Since the end of this ethnographic fieldwork until the pandemic in 2020, I followed my informants through Facebook and did short fieldwork trips as much as I could, to keep in touch with the islanders. These fieldwork trips were also occasions where I shared with the islanders my publications (Duru 2015, 2016) and talked about this book that I am writing, which they were very much looking forward to and hence updated me with the new changes on the island. The islanders could meet my husband, Giovanni, and our son Antonio (born in 2017) as well as my family and friends who joined me in my post-fieldwork trips to Burgaz. I also had the intention to do longer field trips in 2020, while I was writing this book, however I gave birth to our second child Elena, in October 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, where both Turkey and Denmark (where we currently live) had lockdowns. Turkey had several lockdowns and severe long-term restrictions, such as not being allowed to leave the house, followed by hourly allowance to leave home for different age groups, and lockdowns at the weekends. There were further restrictions for the Princes’ Islands. During the full and partial lockdowns, only those islanders with permanent residence on the islands were allowed to come and go to the islands. The islanders have special islander transport cards, and hence were checked when they took the boat. Even the islanders, who live on the islands in the summer and have permanent residency in other parts of Istanbul were not allowed to visit Burgaz. During the pandemic I was only able to get back to Burgaz in the beginning of January 2022. Thus, in 2021 and 2022, I conducted online, follow-up interviews when some Burgaz islanders reflected on the changes on the island. Despite not being able to do longer field trips and the lockdown due to the pandemic, the combination of long-term ethnographic data, followed by short field trips and online interviews until today made me able to give a longitudinal perspective on conviviality on Burgaz and to follow the changes that took place.