• 1 It is also referred to as Phokaia and/or Phocaea in English/Latin, Παλαιά Φώκαια in Modern Greek, Π (...)
• 2 Industrialization of shipping is a concept coined by maritime historians that refers to the drastic (...)
• 3 This number is derived from the number of all the residents of the county of Foçateyn in 1914. Sinc (...)

1Around 1910, Eski Foça1, the center of the Ottoman county of Foçateyn, was another bourgeoning boomtown that was located on the shores of Western Anatolia. Although it was predominantly a mining town with considerable agricultural production, its economic character was reshaped with the increasing volume of trade in the late 19th century as a result of increasing European economic presence in the Ottoman markets and due to the globalization of world markets as a result of the industrialization of shipping2. In 1914, right before the summer of the “organized chaos”, which resulted with the forced migration and killing of the Ottoman Greeks, the county reached a population of approximately 23.0003 people most of whom were Ottoman Greeks who had been migrating from the islands on the Aegean initially for better job opportunities and later for ideological reasons too. Muslims, Kurdish, Turkish or otherwise had long been the residents of the county along with non-Muslims such as Greeks, Armenians and Jews. This cosmopolitan outlook reached its peak in the pre-World War I context. On a given day, one would have heard around 8 languages in the harbor of Eski Foça. However, in the early Republican period Eski Foça was an almost deserted ghost town that was demographically engineered into a “homogenous” national community. Only less than 1/3 of its population was left. Devastated by constant warfare, migrations, banditry and state violence Foçateyn lost its human resources, infrastructure and economic “know how”.

• 4 Tilly, Charles, “Reflections on the History of European State-Making” in Charles Tilly, Ed., The Fo (...)

2The story of this radical transition in Eski Foça is parallel to the story of a multidimensional century of change in the last century of the Ottoman Empire. Wars, European imperialism and capitalism, competing nationalisms as savior projects, elites, inter-communal and inter-ethnic tensions and modernization reforms all played their part in this period of turmoil which resulted with the construction of the nations such as Armenian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian, Serbian and Turkish. These processes took place with respective nationalisms’ mutual exclusion of whole communities from their lands, properties, identities or even lives. Many nation states in contemporary Eastern Europe and Middle East rose out of this period of wars of rival nationalisms and the violence of inter-communal groups, inter-ethnic groups and states. Remembering the famous quote of Charles Tilly, brilliantly summarizes the process of the creation of post-Ottoman nation states: “war made the state and the state made war”4 .

• 5 This approach is based upon the approach of William H. Sewell Jr. that is presented in his article (...)

3Nationalisms, like many other “grand narratives”, almost always ended up as destructive political projects. Their historically negative portfolio often agitated researchers. This in return created many research that disregarded or ignored various other elements that were also important as much as national ideologies in the making of certain historical events. I propose that the full comprehension of the transition in the county of Foçateyn is possible only through the simultaneous analysis of the roles of the meaning (such as discursive analysis of the ideologies), power (such as the roles of states, agency and wars) and scarcity (such as economy and modernity)5. This is only possible with the inclusion of all agents of change from peasant to the Sultan, from the European banker to the shopkeeper Nico and Mehmet and from pamphlets and newspapers to the multinational treaties.

• 6 The term is used by Faroqhi to describe the crucial role of Western Anatolian agricultural lands th (...)
• 7 For further discussions about the long term economic affects of the increasing European presence se (...)
• 8 Although it is generally assumed that the penetration of European capital would force pre-capitalis (...)
• 9 These patterns of migration had been frequently used in the last century of the Empire. As a typica (...)

7The level of this attention on Foçateyn gained a new dimension in the late 19th century. The province of Aydın, traditionally regarded as “the capital’s orchard”6, was dominated by the agricultural production of small land owning peasants. However, especially after the increase of European presence in the Ottoman markets (especially after the agreement of Balta Limanı7), Ottoman previsionist economic logic came under serious challenge that in return challenged the role of Aydın province from being “the capital’s orchard” to being the hinterland of the global markets. The county of Foçateyn was no exception in this trend. It was enriched by the European demand for raw materials that were no longer restrained by the Ottoman logic as a result of a series of successive capitulary agreements. Nevertheless, small land owning Ottoman peasantry resisted to the structural challenges brought by the process of the integration with the world markets and the subsequent capitalist changes in the relations of production8. As a result in many places, such as Foçateyn, there was a deficiency of free labor. In the case of Foçateyn, and in many other cases in the Aegean cost, this deficiency was resolved with the migration from the Aegean islands9 and from newly independent Kingdom of Greece. Between these two routes, the former dominated the latter as the major source of migration in the county of Foçateyn.

• 10 For instance in the year of 1894, 363 steamships and 2706 sail ships entered the port of Eski Foça. (...)
• 11 When the Ottomans lost their monopoly over certain irregular customs taxes with the agreement of Ba (...)

8The increase in the population and the volume of economic activities in the region brought prosperity to Foçateyn. Eski Foça, the center of the county, became a center of its economic and administrative activities as well. Compared to the beginnings of the 19th century, the port of Eski Foça has witnessed a drastic increase in the amount of ships visiting in the period of early 20th century10. Ironically, this period of prosperity and economic development carried the seeds of its own destruction. Although, some parts of the Ottoman periphery, such as the province of Aydın, benefited from the increasing presence of European economic dominance, this was not a rule but an exception. In addition despite the fact that the Ottoman center would have hardly survived its thirst for cash without European creditors, Ottoman states’ relation with the European presence was often antagonistic and cautious at best11.

• 12 For a visual representation of this tremendous century of migration and for the approximate number (...)

11The literature that is concerned with the traumatic events of the last century of the Empire (such as forced migrations, population exchanges or demographic engineering projects) often ends up emphasizing one aspect of the reality. For instance, once can often encounter narratives in which “barbarous” Turks/Muslims slaughter Christian communities and drive them out of their lands. On the other hand one can also encounter narratives in which “backstabbing traitors” are “rightfully” punished in times of war. As it is always the case, reality is much more complex and grey rather than black and white. Starting roughly around 18th century people on the Ottoman lands, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, were subjected to atrocities and they were all drown out of their lands, ripped of their properties and lost their lives12. In fact, almost all communities in the former Ottoman lands were so agitated by their experience of atrocities or the stories of those atrocities; their hatred against each other was mobilized by nationalist intellectuals for their ends in a manner of a blood feud. For all sides of this “blood feud” atrocities from the “other” were underlined whereas “our” atrocities were silenced or legitimized.

• 13 Scholars such as Taner Akçam, Matthias Bjornlund and Fuat Dündar wrote some prominent examples of t (...)

13When it comes to the tragedies of the period from Balkan Wars to Turkish Republic, there are three distinguishable approaches that can be identified based on their use of theoretical approaches. First approach consists of a group of studies that emphasize the role of elites, political parties, states and the savior projects in the center of their analysis13. This group of studies dominates the field today. Broadly speaking, this line of approach focuses solely on the role of nationalisms (especially Turkish but sometimes also Armenian and Greek too) as continuous and top to down political projects. This line of approach is not misleading but lacking. Primarily based on the use of discursive analysis and the analysis of power relations (often on a macro level), this group of studies primarily focus on the dynamics of the formation of the Turkish Nationalism and its primary agent: Committee of Union and Progress (or often a few prominent leaders among them). Although very valuable in their own right, these studies often fail to address the roles of the ordinary people, structural factors (such as economic or geographic), local actors and rival nationalisms. They often over-emphasize discursive analysis and the analysis of power relations among elites or states. This in return, indirectly conceals the role of structural elements. Not always but often such studies fail to explain regional peculiarities and the deviations that existed throughout the period of the creation of Turkish nation state that was far from being a linear process.

• 14 Scholars such as Donald Bloxam, Ronald Grigor Suny and Erik Jan Zürcher wrote some prominent exampl (...)

14Another approach consists of a group of studies that emphasize the role of certain events and/or turning points in the course of the history of the late 19th and early 20th century. Such studies14 often employ the use of the analysis of power relations. They often underline the devastating and transforming roles of wars, such as Ottoman-Russian wars, Balkan Wars, World War I and the Turkish War of Independence, or certain political events such as Young Turk congresses, 31st of March incident and Bab-ı Ali coup. Such narratives, although accurate in their arguments, often end up analyzing the roles of the decision makers or bigger structural elements such as the European balance of power. Therefore they are also lacking in the sense that they do not talk about the role of the agency of the ordinary people such as workers or peasants and they give little attention to the local networks that were often decisive in the success of the project of the creation of a Turkish nation.

• 15 Scholars such as Ryan Gingeras and Y. Doğan Çetinkaya wrote some prominent examples of the studies (...)

15Finally there is a third, and chronologically more contemporary group. This set of academic studies15 focus more on the role of the local networks, inter-communal and/or inter-ethnic conflicts and the agency of the ordinary people in line with other structural factors such as the role of European capitalism. This paper considers itself very much in line with this group. The emphasis of this group of studies unravels the reasons behind the regional peculiarities in the creation of the Turkish nation and the Turkish nation state. The attempt of this group of studies is to demonstrate the role of the factors that were not taken into consideration before. They constitute an attempt to complete the missing parts of a puzzling period of the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish republic.

• 16 In the year of 1823 the Foçateyn is reported to be under constant threat of piracy. In one occasion (...)

18These seemingly global forces, which affected the history of the Ottoman Empire in general, were in constant interaction with what might be called as the regional peculiarities. Therefore in order to discuss the regional peculiarities we have to identify the forces that it interacted with. Neither these regional peculiarities, nor the more global forces were more important in the way they affected history. Regional peculiarities can be understood as all the “peripheral/local” elements that were in constant bargain with the more “central/global” forces. For instance the local networks such as the nomadic groups, bandits, workers of certain services (docks, mines or mills), emerging bourgeoisie, local representations of state power and peasants played significant roles in the realization of “savior projects”. Inter-communal and inter-ethnic conflicts also affected the outcomes of more global forces. For example the omnipresent phenomenon of brigandage in the Western Anatolian countryside of late 19th century Ottoman Empire created inter-communal conflicts between brigands and the peasants that later evolved into inter-ethnic conflicts16. These pre-existing tensions helped the nationalists when they tried to transfer the ambivalent feelings against the “other” into certain feelings of distrust and hatred. Finally geography played a very significant role as a structural element among regional peculiarities. Eski Foça’s role as a boomtown due to its geographical location, sustainability of banditry due to the mountainous landscape of Western Anatolia and finally proximity of Aegean islands to the Anatolian mainland all played their role in the shape of events to come in the period of Ottoman transition.

• 17 Çetinkaya accuratly demonstrates that the new public space, which became available to the Ottoman s (...)

19Ottoman reform attempts for modernization, which are often traced back to the period of Selim III, had very important repercussions on the everyday lives of Ottoman subjects. Modernization attempts were stretched across a period of time that is longer than a century and they were often initiated after periods of crisis. The motivations, practices, affects and the reach of the reforming agendas were far from being homogenous. For various reasons some parts of the Empire, especially urban centers, were much more transformed compared to the peripheral areas and compared to the Eastern parts of the Empire in general. The county of Foçateyn, administrated together with one of the most developed provinces of the Empire, had experienced considerable transformation as a result of state’s reforming agenda. In the early 20th century the repercussions of a long century of reforms were overwhelmingly visible on the countryside. Ottoman state’s presence in the public and the private realms of the Ottoman society was constantly increasing. This meant that the “old order” was constantly challenged by the reforming practices. Old hierarchies were challenged and replaced by new ones. In summary, the old social fabrics were directly or indirectly removed and Ottoman subjects’ relations with each other and with the state were redefined17.

• 18 Although we know today that there were a lot of exceptions to the black and white picture of the ro (...)
• 19 For the affects of modern education on non-Muslims see: Somel, Akşin. “Christian community schools (...)

20Although the old idea of “Millet system” was challenged with the modern concept of universal citizenship, in the early 20^th century when, Ottoman society was still a bifurcated society of patronage where Muslims were often in government recruitment and military whereas Christians were getting under Western patronage through business and diplomacy. This general outline had many exceptions such as Christians in high bureaucratic positions and rich Muslim merchants and entrepreneurs18. Nevertheless the very attempts that tried to create universal citizenship failed to do so and many Ottoman subjects’ loyalties to the throne were more undermined than enhanced. Especially with the influence of modernity on the education in the Empire, both Muslim and non-Muslim generations experienced a break with their elders in the way they perceived the world around them. This affect was rather limited and late in Muslim part of the population whereas it was much early and had a radical affect on the non-Muslim generations19. Ottoman subjects met ideas like nation, nationalism, citizenship most of which started to be discussed and spread in the newly emerging modern public spheres. These radical changes in the government, education and public sphere gave birth to new conflicts and new political demands that were delivered to the masses by the generations that rose up in these newly founded institutions.

• 20 For one example of the various workers’ strikes in the harbor of Eski Foça see: (BOA) DH.MKT 2684/3 (...)

23In the county of Foçateyn this general outline had different reflections. Eski Foça of 1910s was a story of economic development. The trade volume was increasing and the local raw materials that were produced were presented to the interests of various markets around the world. These developments changed the outlook of Eski Foça. New neighborhoods, salt depots and public offices were built and the demand for workers increased significantly. The considerable weight of trade activities in the local economy increased compared to the previously important mining and agricultural activities. The presence of Public Debt Administration (PDA) in Eski Foça under French management was a crucial factor in the county. Although it appears that most of the employees of the PDA offices were Muslims, there is also evidence that PDA often employed non-Muslim workers. This is understandable since PDA was almost always in constant conflict with the “old”, pre-capitalist forms of economic relations and it tried to change them into more “modern/efficient” relations. This meant that it was in constant conflict with the workers, artisans and guilds of the places that it operated. Eski Foça was no exception to this. PDA wanted to build new and modernized quays that would enable big ships to board directly in front of the depots. This meant the disappearance of many jobs for the boat and lighter workers whose jobs were to carry the goods from and to the ships that docked outside the shallow waters of the harbor. As a result, it seems like PDA tried to use inter-ethnic rivalry for its own ends in order to break workers’ unity and resistance20. These events later contributed to the creation of the nationalist discourse in which the non-Muslims would be the traitors who allied with the imperialist enemies.

• 21 Teskilat-i Mahsusa was officially administrated under Harbiye Nezareti (Ministry Of War) on 5 Augus (...)
• 22 There is no clear evidence that unravels the nature and the structure of the groups that were assoc (...)
• 23 For the members of CUP politics were brutalized and ends justified the means. For the discussion of (...)

25In the Ottoman Empire, a secret society, which later evolved into a political party, played the central role in the unfolding of the events that surrounded the collapse of the Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic. This organization was İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti [Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)]. Although the idea of nationalism was there in the Empire before Young Turks and before CUP, CUP’s gradual evolution into a Turkish nationalist party with a revolutionary agenda and its hold on power present very crucial turning points. Once established21, CUP kept its clandestine paramilitary groups22 in use whether or not it was in power. CUP used them to grasp the parliamentarian power with undemocratic ways, to crush political resistance or to realize their nationalist projects. Forged with the military experience of fighting against nationalist guerilla groups and secret societies throughout the years in which the Ottomans lost the Balkans, these mostly Balkan emigrant men, who formed the majority of CUP, created their own organization and its paramilitary wing based on the idea that they learned the hard way in the years of Balkan defeats. The idea was simple; all means were justified for their political ends. Politics was just a method to seize power and so was the guerilla warfare or clandestine assassinations23. These elites, who identified their interest with that of their state, did their best to preserve and develop the power of Ottoman polity in a time where there was a will and a consensus on the destruction of the “sick man of Europe”.

• 24 CUP’s physical, human and discursive tools did not diminish when Ottoman Empire was defeated in WWI (...)

26The CUP was not always what it became after Bab-i Ali coup. However once the coup was over and once the party got rid of all opposition, it became a party that acted like a state within state. Understanding the events stretching from 1913 to 192224 requires keeping this dilemma in mind. On the one hand there was the Sultan and the Ottoman parliament. On the other hand there was a party that was never democratically successful but was in power. Furthermore this party [Party Of Union and Progress (PUP)] was just the public face of the committee (CUP) that ruled it behind the curtains. Some institutions and people, throughout the vast Ottoman geography, were loyal to one group whereas some were loyal to the other. This divided nature of Ottoman elites had almost disappeared when the CUP triumvirate installed its dictatorship after 23 January 1913 that enabled it to deliver its radical decisions in the Empire. But what was the human resource of the projects of the CUP? What were the reasons behind the unequal acceptance or resistance to the policies of the CUP? History of this period of turmoil in the county of Foçateyn gives answers to those questions.

• 25 For a discussion of the various elements in Young Turk mind set and especially for the influence of (...)

27Finally, wars also played crucial roles with the ways that they altered the power relations, locally and globally, and with the way they affected the perception of legitimate violence in the Ottoman society. Turkish nationalism was fueled with wars such as various wars with Russia (but most importantly the War of 93), nationalist uprisings (such as Illinden uprising of 2 August 1903), Balkan Wars and the World War I. These wars, when considered altogether, make one thing clear: the last century of the Empire witnessed almost omnipresent warfare. To put it in a nutshell, in various ways, these wars affected both elites and ordinary people alike. If four words would be chosen to define the affects of war, those would be resentment, injustice, insecurity and migration. Muslims of the former Balkan provinces of the Empire and especially the majority of the members of the Young Turks had first-hand experience of violence, inter-communal and inter-ethnic, when they were killed, thrown out of their homelands and assaulted by paramilitary groups and bandits. The experience of violence from Christians were very much alive and they were transferred from one generation to the other as feelings of resentment for generations to come even after they took refuge in the Ottoman lands25. As a result of this constant warfare; insecurity, in almost all of the Ottoman countryside and in the former Ottoman lands, became a matter of everyday life. Outlaws, draft dodgers, former soldiers often dominated the ranks of bandits and chettes. States, either the failing Ottoman state or the newly established Balkan states, failed to or consciously did not protect the security of its very own citizens. They seized the opportunity to use insecurity for their radical nationalist projects. Injustice often became a norm in some sort of logic of a blood feud in which one “national” community’s violence legitimized others’ violent response in a vicious cycle. Nation states used each other’s respective nationals (“the enemies within”) for diplomatic and political leverage.

• 26 Migration for better life opportunities can be considered as examples of limited, small-scale, priv (...)

28Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries the county of Foçateyn, like most other places of the Empire, was under constant pressure of various migrations. There are two driving forces behind these migrations: ideological and individual. These drives often overlapped but the former was almost always sponsored by states for the construction of their respective nations either in forms of wars and agreements or in the form of forced migrations. Individually motivated migrations, in the case of Foçateyn, were a rather limited phenomenon that lasted primarily around mid-19th century up to early 1900s. These migrations were basically “private projects26” for prosperity. In the case of Foçateyn these migrations were characterized with the migration of predominantly Ottoman Greek populations from the Aegean Islands for better jobs and life standards. These migrants often became sharecroppers and/or they filled the need for the free labor in the harbor of the boomtown of Eski Foça. Migrants constituted the work pool of many seasonal occupations such as salt extraction, lighter/dock loading, construction, fishing and mining. These migrations are important since later, the new population balance they created was perceived as a treat by Turkish nationalists.

• 27 For the discussion of the idea of positivism among Young Turks see: Hanioğlu, Şükrü. “Blueprints fo (...)

29Minds of the members of CUP, like many of their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe, were preoccupied with the positivist ideas of a future society27. CUP members, most of whom were military officers, thought that the “sickness” of the Ottoman Empire could be diagnosed with tools of science such as sociology. The cure for the Ottoman failures rested in the creation of a Prussian inspired “Nation in Arms” through construction of a politically and militarily sustainable Muslim and Turkish motherland that was to be developed by a national economy. Intellectuals in the late Ottoman Empire, more specifically Young Turks and members of CUP, were not always nationalists. Ideas of liberalism, socialism, Islamism, Ottomanism and Turkism existed simultaneously and they often used each other’s rhetoric that makes it impossible to define them as separate spheres. The idea of Turkish nationalism gradually dominated minds of the most of the CUP members especially after the Balkan Wars and the subsequent installation of CUP’s dictatorship in 1913. When elites such as the members of the CUP brought their nationalist ideas they found both supporters and resistance among the Ottoman population.

• 28 CUP was also concerned about the loyalties and identities of its Muslim subjects. Its policy was ve (...)
• 29 The term sleeping beauty here refers to the nationalist perspective of a primordial idea of the nat (...)
• 30 There were many cases in which people seized the opportunities that were presented by the nationali (...)
• 31 I think there is a striking similarity between how workers tired to improve their living conditions (...)

30For the members of the CUP, and especially for the infamous Triumvirate, if an organ in the society was irreparably sick the only method to heal the body was to get rid of that irreparable organ. For CUP this “irreparable” part of the Ottoman society were the disloyal elements that were often, but not limited to, non-Muslims28. When CUP diagnosed the sickness of their state and decided on the method of “cure” there was already a popular support for nationalism among various Ottoman subjects. Some non-Muslim groups such as Armenians, Greeks, Albanians or Bulgarians, were already supporting nationalism before their Muslim counterparts in the society. However it is misleading to argue that CUP installed the nationalist agenda to Ottoman Muslims from top to down. As it was the case with their non-Muslim and European counterparts, Young Turks found their “sleeping beauties”29 ready to be woken up30. For many people nationalist project presented an opportunity of social mobility and they acted as “public projects”31 for certain groups in the society.

• 32 The idea of a national and native economy with a powerful industry that is built and run by “loyal”(...)
• 33 These border lands of the Ottoman Empire included places that were subject to the claims of other s (...)

31For CUP, there were three pillars that the Turkish nation would be built upon: cultural, economic32 and demographic. Although Turkish nationalists tried to construct these pillars simultaneously, demographic project had to be taken care of urgently. When the WWI was imminent and the idea of the “union of the elements” (İttihad-i Anasır) was no longer feasible even among the Muslim part of the population, the demographic agenda became a pressing matter to be resolved. Having witnessed the loss of Balkans, annexation of Bosnia Herzegovina, Russian claims on the Eastern provinces and the Albanian revolts Ottoman elites’ definition of the “loyal elements” was shaken to its foundations. These general feelings of betrayal and disenchantment (with Ottomanism and Pan-Islamism) were transformed into radical savior projects in the minds of the few CUP leaders. For the leaders of CUP a World War was imminent. They had to take sides with the alliance that would help them keep their territorial integrity and even give them opportunities to seize their recent losses. Although it was not their initial intention, they ended up in an alliance with the Central Powers. However, before this alliance was formed and before WWI broke out, they had to legitimize their existence on their present borders based on the modernist and positivist logic of statistical population numbers that dominated the international politics. Subsequently they had to forge and reshuffle their demography in a way that would secure their legitimate rule on them and stop other states like Greece or Bulgaria to make territorial claims. The result was an attempt to increase the proportion of Turkish/Muslim subjects on the “border lands”33(hence, Foçateyn).

• 34 Bayar, Celal. Ben de Yazdım / Milli Mücadeleye Giriş. Vol. 5, İstanbul: Baha Matbaası, 1967. pp. 15 (...)
• 35 For the Eşref Kuşçubaşı report see: Bayar, Celal, Ben de Yazdım / Milli Mücadeleye Giriş. Vol. 5, I (...)
• 36 As mentioned before, CUP was not always a nationalist group. Its perception of the non-Muslim commu (...)
• 37 A prominent member of CUP, Halil Menteşe, explains the details of the policy against the Greeks in (...)
• 38 BjØrnlund, Matthias, “The 1914 Cleansing of Aegean Greeks as a case of violent Turkification” in Jo (...)

32Based on how the members of CUP perceive it, the atrocities through the summer of 1914 against Ottoman Greeks were, in today’s terms, measures of “preemptive strike”. That is to say when Eşref Kuşçubaşı presented his report34 to fellow party members on the situation of non-Muslims on Western Anatolian shores, he underlined the fact that in case of a World War, these “consciously Greekified” regions on the Western Anatolia would stab the Ottoman army in the back. He was underlining that the young Greeks, who now reside on the shores, were receiving military training on the Islands. He was also stressing that the Greeks were bringing more Greeks from the Kingdom of Greece through marriage and they were consciously trying to increase the population of Greeks. He complained that Muslims had no control over the region around the Aydın province railway network and they were denied of jobs in the railway35. Therefore Eşref urged that measures must be taken immediately in order to avoid the loss of these “historically Turkish” lands. It is not possible to understand the true nature of all Greek migrations to the Western Anatolian shores. However it is clear that both economic reasons and ideological reasons motivated people. It was clear that two rival nationalisms claimed the same territory as “historically theirs”and both tried to use demography to support their claims. Once the treat perception was fully established36 after Eşret Kuşçubaşı’s report, all Ottoman Greeks were now one big homogenous group of “dangerous elements” that had to be gotten rid of. The county of Foçateyn was one of the scenes of the violent “preemptive strikes” that were designed and carried out by CUP³⁷ and its clandestine organization Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa. Ousting of Ottoman Greeks was only the beginning and CUP carried on its project of demographic engineering with ever increasing intensity and violence, over its various “disloyal” subjects, until the surrender of Ottoman Empire and the dissolution of CUP38.

• 39 For a detailed discussion on the nature of the correspondences and examples of them see: Dündar, Fu (...)
• 40 For a detailed analysis of the ousting of Greeks see: ibid. pp. 191-246.
• 41 Ibid., p. 207.
• 42 For instance in the case of the ousting of Greeks on the Western Anatolian shores Rahmi Bey, the go (...)

33Based on the eyewitness accounts, memoirs, photographs and secondary literature, I think the best way to describe the way that the atrocities of 1914 in Foçateyn took place is to employ the term organized chaos. It is clear by the public and secret correspondences of CUP39 and the memoirs of its prominent figures like Mahmut Celal Bayar or Dr. Mehmed Reşid Şahingiray, that demographic engineering was consciously employed as a method of warfare in a planned manner40. The CUP leadership, which established its dictatorial rule by then, took the decision and they did their best to conceal this planned nature of the events in order to avoid diplomatic repercussions41. CUP used its own hierarchy; right down to Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa and this clandestine organization used various local groups like chettes to carry out the ousting of the “enemies within”. As it is understood from eyewitness accounts, the primary aim was to make Ottoman Greeks feel threatened and leave by themselves. However this didn’t take place as it was planned and there was not enough initiative to stop violence. A close look at the case of Foçateyn unravels why this did not always succeeded. It is crucial to underline the fact that CUP’s decision of forced migration was not supported by the entire Ottoman state or society. The decision to act was not unanimous even within the CUP cadres42. However CUP used the instruments of Ottoman state to carry its will and it faced both popular support and resistance alike. Nevertheless, especially in the case of Foçateyn, popular support was largely missing but nonetheless present in some rare cases. The nature of this support is very crucial to understand in order to discuss the history of this nationalist project from a non-elite perspective.

• 43 Also referred to as Σερεκιοι or Γκερένγκιοϊ.
• 44 The original of this account, which was written by Charles Manciet on 18th of June 1914 can be foun (...)

34On the 11th of June 1914 around 18:30, a member of the philhellene archaeologist Felix Sartiaux’s excavation team, Charles Manciet, witnessed the starting of the ousting of Ottoman Greeks from the county of Foçateyn. On that evening, he was working near the road to Menemen from Eski Foça. He was surprised when he saw a long convoy with their packs at hand. He learned that these people were Ottoman Greeks who were running away from Gerenköy43 and they were seeking refuge in Eski Foça44. This is particularly important since on the day Manciet witnessed the refuge seeking Ottoman Greeks, the ousting was yet to start in Eski Foça. This explains the relative density of violence in Eski Foça, compared to the rest of the county. Since Eski Foça was the last place to be cleansed of Ottoman Greeks in the county, many others took refuge in this town (and also in Yeni Foça) that later made it impossible for them to escape. This was simply because there were not enough vessels to carry them to the closest safe heaven that was often the Islands in the Aegean (Midilli/Λέσβος or Sakız/Χίος).

• 45 Ibid., pp. 185-191.

35According to Manciet, the next morning (12th of June, 1914) witnessed a tremendous panic among people since they thought that the chettes that they ran away were about to come to Eski Foça. Initially people locked themselves in their houses but later, around noon, approximately 1000 people fled with fishing boats and sails to Midilli. He and Felix Sartiaux were surprised to see people flee without their belongings before the enemy showed up. Subsequently, Sartiaux, Carlier, Dandria and Manciet all went to the governor and insisted for protection of their lives and property. Four Gendarmeries were assigned to them and they used their houses as sanctuaries for Christians. They were able to safeguard around 800-900 people. At the same night, around 20:00, Manciet heard gunshots from the army (he assumed the group to be a part of the regular army which was not the case) that was marching silently over the mountains surrounding Eski Foça. He recalls hearing two different directions for gunshots and assumes that there were two armies from opposite direction encircling Eksi Foça. Based on what was previously discussed on the approach of CUP, the gunshots and the gradual approach of the bandit and chette hordes that were initiated by Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, must have aimed installing panic among the non-Muslims so that they would flee by themselves. Manciet states that these two armies started to plunder the city in the night and by the morning (13th of June, 1914) gunshots were getting close to their homes. When they left their houses, he recalls seeing the most disgraceful acts ever imaginable45.

• 46 Talat Pasha refuses such claims of a chain of command between Community of Union and Progress and T (...)
• 47 Researchers often tend to see CUP as one big homogenous group of nationalists. Although CUP evolved (...)

36Ousting of Ottoman Greeks was coordinated through CUP hierarchy 46. Talat Paşa was on the top with Mahmut Celal Bayar (Aydın provincial representative of CUP) and İzmir/Smyrna Governor Rahmi Bey47 on the provincial level. Under them came Eşref Kuşçubaşı who was probably the architect of the actual events on the field. He was experienced in guerilla warfare, a fierce nationalist and a pragmatist. He was commandingchettes or çeteler as the people often referred it. Chettes consisted of a group of bandits, draft dodgers, thieves and convicts most of whom were granted amnesty in order to increase the human resource of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, the clandestine organization of CUP. Although there are no hard facts about the members of this clandestine group, it is logical to assume that forced migrated Muslims (muhacirs) constituted an important part in this group. On the morning of the 13th of June 1914, the nature of these outlaw people played a significant role in the outcome of the ousting plans. Plundering of the non-Muslim properties was a common practice of the chettes. This is predictable in three ways. First of all they were already bandits and thieves. They were not bounded by any professional conduct and therefore their guerilla warfare had no norms that would stop them from looting. Secondly, although coordinated by Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, they were not under state duty and therefore in case of diplomatic pressure their acts might be presented as their own ill conduct. This gave these groups some sort of autonomy while practicing their violent acts. Furthermore, for leaders like Eşref Kuşçubaşı, plundering of private property by chettes might have looked like a legitimate act that would help the transfer of wealth into the “national economy”. Finally, since the very character of this whole demographic engineering project was its secrecy, it is logical to assume that plunder might have been perceived as an opportunity to lessen the economic burden of these operations which would otherwise create major costs that would be hard to conceal.

• 48 According to Dündar, CUP government was cautious about the international attention. Both the boycot (...)

37Manciet states that on the morning of the 13th of June, people and cavalry who were armed with rifles occupied Eski Foça. Christians rushed to the shores but there were no ships left for them to board. It seems like since there were no vessels left to leave many people tried to defend themselves in their homes. This made things worse since plunder-seeking chettes had to force them out of their property. Manciet’s account describes one such violent scene where a Christian house was assaulted by chettes for plunder and when the man tried to defend his house and his family at the entrance of his house he and later his wife were killed by chettes. According to Manciet, two big steamships that were docked right outside the harbor were great fortunes for Christians. These Frenchmen convinced these ships to allow Christians on board and many victims had the opportunity to leave. Around noon Manciet and his fellows, horrified with the plundering and killings, threatened the Gendarmeries, who were until then bystanders, to take action and help the deportation. Their intimidation succeeded and Gendarmeries allowed safe passage to those who were still trying to reach the shore and to the steam ships. Manciet also recalls seeing packed camels climbing the mountains through the roads connecting Eski Foça to outside. They were full with the plunder taken from the town. All these support the idea that these atrocities were planned in nature. Although they were cautious to avoid loss of life killings took place in certain parts of the town when the chettes and the property owners encountered each other48.

• 49 Although this term means peasant and although it is also used for Muslim peasants the writer of the (...)
• 50 He was condemning violence publicly and he even suspended Foça, Ayvalık and Biga governors from the (...)
• 51 Kelekyan, Diran. Seyahat Etrafında Dahiliye Nazır-ı Muhteremiyle Mülakat, Sabah newspaper, 29 June (...)

38When the 13th of June was over, those who were poor or not resourceful enough to find a vessel and those who were too old to run away became the target of the organized chaos. Manciet recalls that most of the wounded were among those older than 60 and sometimes even 90 years old. Those people were wounded when they were defending their property. According to Manciet’s eyewitness account the nature of the atrocities took a crucial turn around the 17th of June. He states that soldiers were sent from İzmir to establish order but these soldiers ended up plundering the town. Manciet states that the atrocities he had witnessed were of an organized nature that aimed at circling Christian peasant populations (reaya⁴⁹) of the region. According to him, murder and plunder continued until the 18th of June when he finally read in the (resmi gazete) official newspaper that the order was restored and there would not be any danger for Christians. Simultaneously, between 11th and 13th of June, Talat Paşa was already on his visit to Western Anatolian coast. His aim was to discourage Ottoman Greeks from their “self motivated” migration attempts that has already resulted with the runaway of many Ottoman Greeks in Trakya region. It is important to underline that as he moved on his route from Balıkesir to Manisa, which included visits to Burhaniye, Ayvalık, Balya, Bergama and Dikili, atrocities against the Ottoman Greeks were still taking place all around him. He was very careful in giving the impression that Ottoman government was doing its best to establish order50. Later when he was asked if there were any murders through the process he answered that only Foça and two villages of Menemen witnessed such atrocities and he added that the guilty parties were severely punished51.

• 52 There is no written material left by the Muslim population of the county of Foçateyn about the even (...)
• 53 He was born in Bağarası on 1317 (1901) and he was a local resident for his entire life. EBOHA Mehme (...)
• 54 He was born in Yeni Foça on 1323 (1905) and he was a local resident for his entire life. EBOHA Mehm (...)
• 55 EBOHA Mehmet Peker interview, conducted in Eski Foça, 1995-1997.
• 56 EBOHA Mehmet Tahsin Kalkan interview, conducted in Menemen, 1995-1997.

39Although Manciet’s account provides a valuable insight about the organized nature of the events and its violent practices, it fails to deliver the situation of local Muslim residents of the time. When assessed critically, oral historical accounts of the Muslim residents52 of Eski Foça reveals a complicated picture. Mehmet Peker53 states that he watched the events of 1914 from his house, located in the center of the town. He remembers the members of the chettes as foreigners to his region and he curses them as “rats” who “looted, stole and burned down Greek property”. Mehmet Peker also states that once his Greek neighbors left, their houses were occupied by muhacirs [forced Muslim migrants] from Yanya [Ιωάννινα]. Mehmet Tahsin Kalkan54, who remembers the days of pillage and violence in great shame and depression, states that once the Greeks were almost gone “there was so much looting going on… everybody took what was left from Greeks, food, carpets, furniture…”. His account tells us that despite locals were either bystanders or in some cases resistance, there were still opportunists especially on the last day of the events when it was thought that the Greek would not return. Mehmet Peker55 states that “those [Greeks] who were gone in 1914 came back to their houses [1919-20] and the muhacirs that lived there ran away when the Greeks came… our sharecroppers were back”. He states that they [local peasant Muslims like his family] were happier with Greeks as their sharecroppers compared to having muhacirs. Most of the native townspeople of the county of Foçateyn hid away and they safeguarded their neighbors’ to the best of their abilities. There were even cases, like the example in Yeni Foça56, where a local Muslim mother tried to defend the execution of her Greek neighbor by risking quarrel with chettes. However not all accounts of the events were of this nature. There is a striking difference in the behaviors of the Muslim communities on the basis of their relations with the local networks. That is to say people who did not belong to the local network of the county of Foçateyn were more active in these nationalist projects and they saw them as legitimate acts of revenge.

• 57 For a summary of these mass movements see: McCarthy, Justin, Forced Migration and Mortality in the (...)

40Muhacir is the name that is given to the forced Muslim migrants in the late Ottoman Empire. This very diverge group of people, who had been experiencing murders, pillage and forced migration themselves57, were largely radicalized against Christian populations. They had been witnessing various forms of violence from the post-Ottoman nation states. These injustices to their properties, lives and dignity were delivered by the states that had to protect them or by the communities who considered them as the “other”. Just as in the case of Eksi Foça and in the case of Turkish nationalism, Greek, Serbian, Bulgarian or Macedonian nationalisms were as violent in oppressing and murdering the “other” for sake of national homogenization. As a consequence, these muhacir groups were much more inclined to participate in the violent acts of demographic engineering initiated by CUP.

• 58 EBOHA, Ferit Oğuz Bayır interview, Eski Foça, 1995-1997.

41This inclination is very much evident when the accounts of the Muslims such as Mehmet Peker, and Mehmet Tahsin Kalkan, who both belonged to the local networks, are compared to the accounts of a muhacir. Ferit Oğuz Bayır58 was born on 1899 in Simav. Coming from a migrant family, he spent his early years in Edirne. He was educated in one of the modern teachers’ schools (Dar-ül Muallimin) of Abdülhamit II and he states that he learned that he was a Turk from his teachers who wrote books about Turkism. He vividly remembers some of the tragic events of the Empire such as the Balkan Wars. He states that the life in Edirne is vivid in his memories with all its injustice and brutality. He says that the life and the animosities of that era are still alive in “us”. This man, who was educated in a modern institution and who experienced 1908, siege of Edirne and the Balkan Wars has a radically different view on the events that took place in the Western Anatolia. According to his evaluation everybody knows that Greeks who tried to escape with boats or other things (in 1922, second time after they started to come back in 1919) were stopped and the punishments they deserved were delivered to them in and around the harbor of Eski Foça. This brief piece from Bayır’s interview is enough to show the contrast between the way migrants perceived the events.

• 59 Reşat Kasaba also suggested a similar method of comparison in his work where he tried to identify t (...)
• 60 This comparison of muhacir groups to the “old” Greek neighbors is a repeated topic in both Mehmet T (...)

42It can be observed that people who belonged to the local networks were radically different in their perception of the “other” compared to the migrant groups who were alien to the local networks59. For the latter these radical nationalist projects presented both the opportunity of personal revenge and economic security that was lost since they were forced out of their lands. For instance local Muslims preferred their old Greek neighbors in the fields as sharecroppers since muhacirs had no respect to the rights of ownership60. This is understandable since muhacirs also must have felt injustice on their part. In the end they saw Greek property as an exchange to their own losses in their respective homelands. They must have asked for more land than they were given in order to compensate their losses. This was twice as hard in a place like the county of Foçateyn where arable land was already scarce due to geography. This paper has limited itself to the events of the summer of 1914. However the latter periods of similar forced migration and demographic engineering projects shed even more light into this difference of popular support among the respective populations. In addition this paper is also only limited to the discussion of Turkish sources. However my preliminary research indicates that the difference between the migrant and the native also exists among the Greek community.

• 61 Dündar, Fuat, Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi/İttihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mühendisliği (1913-1918). (...)

43When the summer of organized chaos was over the population of the entire county of Foçateyn decreased down to 4000. It was organized yet it was also chaos since the very forces that were used to realize the radical political ends of CUP were uncontrollable in their nature. Furthermore, as it was demonstrated above, many local factors also played their part in increasing or decreasing the level of violence. When WWI begun the worse was yet to come. Nationalist “blood feud” between Greek and Turkish nationalists was going to take its toll on the people up until much later. In October 22, 1914 ousting of Greeks came to an end yet this time Ottoman government took responsibility in reshuffling Greeks into inner Anatolia as a diplomatic leverage against Greece61. This was followed by Greek occupation of Western Anatolia in 1919 and the subsequent horrors. Later, Turkish War of Independence that claimed back the Greek occupied territories followed it. This process brought yet another destruction of people and settlements. Finally Lausanne treaty marked the end of the long period of wars for the people of the region. Lausanne became the biggest “legal” tragedy of the era when the populations exchange between Greece and Turkey was mutually agreed as a way to end further conflict. All these procedures had their own dynamics and they all caused injustice and destruction for many people on all sides of the conflict.