• 1 From very earlier periods, forced migration has a close association with the state. It was the poli (...)

1Forced migration is central theme of history. Temporally, it can be observed from ancient times to the present era ; spatially, it is possible to view it in several geographies. No period or geography of human history appears to be immune from this phenomenon. As many examples demonstrate, the manipulation of the demographic composition of a territory for the purpose of controlling and dominating its resources is not restricted to the modern age, when the practice began to take on a different character due to the political redefinition of the state and its constituents.1 Although motives of displacement, removal and elimination of a specific population group have not essentially changed from the pre-modern era, modern implementations deserve particular conceptualization not only because of the political redefinition of the state as nation-state and its essential constituent as nation but also for the subtle and diverse methods employed in manipulating populations and its universalization. In the modern age, forced population movements were no longer solely the work of ‘great’ states with the military and political strength to conquer and colonize. They were also used by ‘minor’ states with limited power, as well as by political actors claiming to form the state. The interaction of economic, political, scientific and intellectual developments in the 19^th century contributed much to the dissemination of practices of manipulating the population figures and provided the means of doing it in an ‘engineered’ manner. This paper aims to introduce demographic engineering as an analytical tool and to give an overview of forced migration in the Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic by using the vocabulary derived from it. Rather than an exhaustive and in-depth analysis of the forced population movements, it aims to present a comprehensive conceptual framework which may provide broader perspective in approaching forced migration issues of, particularly, the late Ottoman era and the early Turkish Republic.

• 2 Attempting to classify the methods of ethnic conflict management and termination, McGarry and O’Lea (...)

4The relationship between demographic engineering and nationalism, particularly its ethnic form, is well-established. As McGarry aptly states, the development of nationalism has shaped demographic engineering in the modern period (1998 : 615). The impacts of the development of nationalism in this respect are twofold. First, ethnicity in many cases became the primary criterion in defining the affiliation to nation and state, which were generally named on behalf of the dominant ethnic group. Secondly, the groups that did not belong to the dominant ethnicity were cast out of the ‘ethnic nation’ and were relegated to minority status and/or assimilated. Whenever minorities developed ‘minority-based nationalist movements’ they confronted states and were viewed as threats to state security. As a result demographic engineering was implemented against those groups which nationalism determined as being against the state (McGarry 1998 : 615, 623). Forced population movements thus typically occurred during wars for national self-determination in which the national was defined along ethnic lines as a form of ‘ethnic unmixing through migration, murder, or some combination of both’. As a result, demographic engineering occurred frequently in the process of nation-state formation, the ‘ethnic nationalization of existing states’ (Brubaker 1996 : 154-155), and during ethnic conflicts, especially as a method of conflict management and resolution.2

• 3 The author of this study is aware of the vast literature on the terms nation, ethnicity, nation-sta (...)

5Although the framework suggested so far has been formed through the cases of ethnic conflicts that were seen in the last two decades in the regions stretching from the Balkans to the Caucasus to Africa, it seems very applicable to policies adopted by many states in the past, especially in the context of imperial decline, nation-state formation and nation-building processes. Intimately related to the rise of nationalism, particularly in its ethnic form,3 governments widely attempted to homogenize territories within their jurisdiction by employing the methods of demographic engineering. Manipulation of population figures by statistical records, deportation, assimilation, massacres and ethnic cleansing were the most frequently used methods.

• 4 Erik-Jan Zürcher (2008) aptly defines the modern period of the Ottoman Empire in general and the la (...)
• 5 This periodization is an approximate one. It is not claimed that it has general applicability.

6The Ottoman Empire illustrates to a great extent the manipulation of population figures under the initiative of the state. From the 16^th century until its final dissolution in the first quarter of the 20^th century, the Ottoman lands witnessed intensive state-induced population mobility between regions.4 Forced migration in the Ottoman Empire can be divided in three sub-periods. The first period extends from the 16^th to 18^th centuries when the Ottomans resorted to deportation and resettlement policy with military, administrative, economic, and to some extent political motives. During the second period, which extends from the second half of the 19^th century into 1913, the Ottoman lands became a shelter for Muslim refugees coming from the Caucasus and the Balkans. In their resettlement, the Ottoman officials exclusively took immigrants’ ethnic and religious affiliations into consideration, especially after 1878. The final period, the years in between 1913-1918, population movements were the result of the policy followed by a nationalist elite aiming to ethnically restructure the Empire’s core territory, Anatolia.5 In the following, an overview of each sub-period will be presented in accordance with the main purpose of this essay, which is to evaluate emigration/immigration issue in Ottoman/Turkish history through the concept of demographic engineering.

• 6 There are diverse figures on the emigrated Tatars. While Tekeli (1990: 55) and Saydam (1997: 65) gi (...)
• 7 A challenging study that urges one to think that this was not a linear development has been publish (...)

10The first example of emigration was that of the Crimean Tatars, who had to flee from their lands as a result of the Russian subordination of the region in the last quarter of the 18^th century.6 Their immigration continued into the 19^th century, especially after the Crimean War. During and following this war, hundreds of thousands Tatars were forced to move to other regions because of discriminatory Russian policies which viewed them as a ‘harmful element’ and as a threat to security, and due to fear of Russification (Pinson 1970 : 32ff ; Karpat 1985 : 66). Following the Tatars, the Circassians became the subject of the Russian policy of expulsion in the 1860s. Besides administrative, military, strategic and security reasons, ideological and cultural concerns seem to have played a role in their emigration into Ottoman lands (Pinson 1970 : 85-86 ; Karpat 1985 : 67).7 Ottoman-Russian military confrontations continued to produce Muslim refugees from the Caucasus and the Balkans in the coming decades. The most illustrative case is the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish war.

• 8 This is not peculiar situation to the national development of Greece and observable in every case i (...)

11The Russo-Turkish war also displays the disruptive effects of nationalism in the Ottoman context. The principal cause of Muslim emigration from the Balkans in the aftermath of the war was nationalism, which had already become a legitimizing ideology of independence demands for would-be states in the Balkans. In addition to the considerable losses among the Muslim-Turkish population due to massacres during and after the war, the emergence of independent Serbian and Romanian states and an autonomous Bulgaria in the post-war settlement was accompanied by the flow of Muslim-Turkish refugees in huge numbers (İpek 1994). However, this was not a new development in the Balkans. Since the beginning of the 19^th century, the ‘nationalization’ process among some groups brought about the ‘othering’ of others, depending on the definition of the ‘imagined nation’. The Greek case is noteworthy in this respect since it was the first and, more importantly, became a role model for emerging nationalisms in the Balkans (McCarthy 1995 : 9-10). During and after the Greek struggle for independence Muslims became the target of the Greek nationalists. They were the ‘alien’ elements of the Greek nation. They were massacred, forced to leave and had their lands seized for the sake of nationalization. From the 1820s to the 1910s, the Greek policy-makers undertook such measures against Muslims within the jurisdiction of the Greek state on several occasions.8

• 9 These were the measures taken as a result of the Muslim emigration into the Ottoman lands and shoul (...)

12Nation-state formation gained momentum in the Balkans in the 1870s. In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, the emergence of autonomous Bulgaria was accompanied by the forced migration of the Muslims from the Bulgaria-owned lands. In the space of approximately two decades, from 1870 to 1888, the Muslim population of Bulgaria decreased sharply as a result of the attempts to make ‘Bulgaria for the Bulgarians’ (Brubaker 1996 : 153). From this period until the end of the 20^th century, Muslim emigration was to become ‘a recurrent feature of Bulgaria’s ethno-demographic development’ (Kalionski 2002 : 97). The responses of the Ottomans to Muslim emigration from the Balkans in particular may serve to illustrate not only their short-term reactions but also a long-term policy embedded in the management of ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, a policy that extended well into the inheritor state of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic. First was the resettlement policy that aimed to change the ethnic and religious demographic composition of definite regions for strategic, territorial and political reasons in favor of the Muslim/Turkish elements. The second policy was the ethnic restructuring of Anatolia under a deliberate act of the nationalist ruling elite. It was effectively implemented during the First World War and went hand in hand with the resettlement policy.9

• 10 For addition as a form of state intervention see Weiner and Teitelbaum (2001: 55). McGarry defines (...)

13The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 caused tremendous flows of refugees into the Ottoman lands. Over a million Muslim Turks had to emigrate from the Balkans (İpek 1994 : 40-41 ; Karpat 1985 : 74). The state attempted to resettle these refugees in accordance with its military, strategic and political concerns. Muslim-Turkish refugees were resettled along the borders and in villages around the Straits in order to secure the borders and the the Straits, and to balance the non-Muslim population in strategic regions. In some cases, they were resettled in such a way as to surround non-Muslims in order to counter-balance the latter and prevent them from forming the majority. Resettlement with these motives was carried out on a wide geographical scope including Rumelia, Eastern Anatolia, the Vilayet of Hudavendigar and Macedonia on the eve of the Balkan Wars (İpek 1994 : 155-159 ; 176-179 ; 197 ; 206-207 ; Ağanoğlu 2001 : 101-108). In this way, the Ottoman state promoted and added a particular group of population as settlers into some regions populated by minority groups.10 The second response to refugee flows into the Ottoman lands was to remove definite population groups, ‘enemies which in their present location pose a problem for the authorities and an obstacle to their goals’ (McGarry 1998 : 615), ‘out of the country or from one portion of the country to another’ (Weiner and Teitelbaum 2001 : 55-56). This overlaps with the final phase of the forced migration in the Ottoman Empire which signifies a radical break from the past in dealing with refugee problem as well as ethnic issues.

• 11 Social Darwinism was very influential among the Ottoman intellectuals from 1890s to 1910s (Doğan 20 (...)

15The last climactic phase of Ottoman-Turkish demographic engineering policies can be grasped within this framework. On the eve of the First World War, nationalist elite within the Committee of Union and Progress, who perceived world events through the lens of Social Darwinism11 had seized power in the Ottoman Empire. During the First World War, they focused their efforts on the demographic restructuring of Anatolia. The survival of the state and the recently defined nation were the main motives behind this attempt, and they found the practical justification in their failure to preserve the state’s territorial integrity against minority nationalisms and the great powers’ interventions. Nevertheless, the incessant flow of Muslim-Turkish refugees from the Balkans during and in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars seems to induce the Unionist élite into action in this respect. Their suffering at the hands of Bulgarian and Greek nationalists who aimed to homogenize their territories reinforced and popularized the Turkish nationalist sentiment (Edib 1930 : 115) and it stimulated the policy-makers into developing ways of resettling them.

• 12 For the evaluation of ‘Turcification’ as ‘nation-building’ process see Ülker (2005).
• 13 For the conceptual and narrative account of the Armenian deportation and massacres see Bloxham (200 (...)

16The resettlement of Muslim-Turkish refugees was not an end in itself but part of a broader project of ‘nationalizing’ or ‘Turcifying’ the Ottoman lands.12 This project had two main aspects : forcing ‘disloyal’ elements to migrate and resettling supposed ‘loyal’ refugees into evacuated places. It was with these goals that the Unionist leadership inaugurated a campaign against the Ottoman Greeks to disrupt their economic activities and to uproot them through coercive measures on the eve of the First World War (Dündar 2008 : 191-248). The implementation of this policy against the Armenian population during the War demonstrates all aspects of the Unionist demographic mentality. Legitimized by security concerns, measures ranging from murder and massacre to religious conversion, assimilation and seizure of property were undertaken simultaneously, illustrating political, demographic and economic aspects of demographic engineering.13

• 14 Speaking on the integration of the Muslim refugees in the aftermath of the Lausanne settlement, Ülk (...)

17A similar mentality was at work in the resettlement of the Muslim refugees. The Unionists made solid preparations to organize their resettlement in such a way that they would efficiently assimilate into the Turkish population.14 For example, they enacted the Law for the Settlement of Immigrants, which led to the formation of the General Directorate for Settlement of Tribes and Refugees. The resettlement of Albanian and Bosnian refugees who were expelled from the Balkans and of the Kurds fleeing before the Russian troops demonstrates that the Unionist government did not want to see any non-Turkish group forming a majority in a particular region and constituting more than 5-10 % of the population. The Directorate was also in charge of linguistic and ethnological research on ethnic and religious minorities in Anatolia such as Kizilbashes, Bektâshis, Ahîs, Armenians, Alevis, Kurds and Turcomans, unequivocally for political goals. It is estimated that approximately half of the Anatolian population, approximately 8 million souls, had to move during the First World War due to the Committee of Union and Progress’s deportation and resettlement policy (Dündar 2006 : 37-42).

• 15 At this point, the intimate relationship between ‘size and power’ should be underlined since ‘the r (...)
• 16 The occupation of Izmir and its environ examplify this situation well. Besides massacres, between 8 (...)
• 17 As frequently stressed in this essay, population transfers, displacement, forced migration has been (...)

18When the First World War ended, the demographic composition of Anatolia had been radically changed as a result of the Unionist wartime policy. In the aftermath of the War a struggle broke out among the ethno-religious groups of Anatolia attempting to preserve or change the existing demographic composition in accordance with their political goals. Initially, the principle of self-determination, which was considered to be the basic principle in remapping Anatolia in accordance with the population figures of different ethnic groups on the same territory, led the competing groups to use politicized statistics on ethnic populations at the Paris Peace Conference.15 Turkish, Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish claimants presented a variety of numbers in order to justify their nationalist causes for annexation, autonomy or independence. In addition, each group resorted to violent measures in order to decrease the numbers of rival groups. While the Turkish nationalists, for example, spent considerable effort to maintain the demographic status quo that resulted from the Unionist wartime policy by setting obstacles before the repatriation of the surviving Armenian deportees, the Greek and the Armenian nationalists made efforts to reverse this policy in favor of their political goals by forcing the Muslim population to migrate in the Greek or Allied occupied regions, and in some cases massacring them.16 Thus between 1919-1922 there was a severe struggle among competing nationalisms aiming to fulfill their programs by increasing the size of the favored ethnic/religious group at the expense of rival groups. This struggle resulted in the almost complete elimination of the non-Muslim population from Anatolia, mainly through coercive measures. However, the resolution of the Turkish-Greek conflict through an internationally sanctioned treaty, the population exchange has tremendous symbolic significance as it shows that the ‘engineering’ mentality was not restricted to actors that were directly involved in the struggle but was a widespread means of conflict resolution.17

• 18 According to the official census of 1935, among the 16.157.450 total population, there were Greek O (...)
• 19 Several studies have attempted to uncover the Turkish nation-state’s policy toward minorities as we (...)

20The Turkish nation-state was established on a Muslim foundation in 1923. The inter-ethnic struggles that accompanied the inter-state wars between 1912-1922 and the Committee of Union and Progress’s Turcification policy resulted a territory inhabited by an approximately 98 % Muslim population. Nevertheless, the Ottoman Empire’s multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual societal structure was inherited by the new state despite the tremendous quantitative change.18 In managing the heterogeneous society, the founders of the nation-state employed repressive and assimilative means in accordance with a Turkish nationalism that defined the constituencies of the ‘imagined nation’ in 1920s and 1930s.19

• 20 For an analysis of the relationship between citizenship and ethnic origin see Yeğen (2002).

21Taking into consideration the citizenship definition of the 1924 Constitution and the historical and linguistic studies that formed the intellectual basis of Turkish nationalism in the early Republican era it can be argued that the Turkish nationalist elite oscillated between civic-territorial and ethnic forms of nationalism (Poulton 1997 : 97). The 1924 Constitution stated that ‘the people of Turkey, regardless of religion and race, are Turks as regards citizenship’ (Kili and Gözübüyük 2000 : 138). At first sight, this definition defined citizenship as membership of the political community regardless of ethnic origin ; however, this did not come to mean that ethnicity was entirely disregarded. As many practices demonstrate, the door was left open for the cultural and linguistic assimilation of non-Muslim minorities and non-Turkish Muslims into the supreme ethnic identity.20

• 21 A study by Guttstadt (2006: 50-56) focuses on another aspect of ‘Turcification’ policy comprising o (...)
• 22 From Wealth Tax of 1942 to 6-7 September Events in 1955; from the plan that was prepared by the Sta (...)

22Cultural and linguistic assimilation into Turkishness, which was defined around secular and overtly ethnic nationalist terms, was the principal end, and repression, settlement and deportation were the principal means of demographic engineering in the early Turkish Republic. ‘Turcification’ policies encompassed curbing non-Muslim communities’s minority rights, which had been granted in the Lausanne Settlement (Alexandris 1992 : 135-139 ; Levi 1996 : 70-74 ; Bali 2000 : 59-77) forcing the public use of Turkish under the motto ‘citizen, speak Turkish’ (Bali 2000 : 105-109), to promoting Muslim immigration from the Balkans in order to strengthen ‘the cohesion and homogeneity of Turkish nation’, settling new immigrants among the Kurdish population to provide a Turkish majority in overwhelmingly Kurdish-populated areas and dispersing the Kurdish population among the Turks through a Settlement Law enacted in 1934 (Ülker : 2007 and 2008), and finally, changing place names, a policy Öktem (2009) calls ‘toponymical engineering’. There are many more examples of the Turcification policy,21 but at the moment it is proper to conclude that the ‘Turcification’ motive of Turkish nationalism was not restricted to the First World War and early Republican periods but extended well into the end of the 20^th century.22