Greeks Without Greece: Homelands, Belonging, and Memory Amongst the Expatriated Greeks of Turkey

Description

Faced with discrimination in Turkey, the Greeks of Istanbul and Imbros overwhelmingly left the country of their birth in the years c.1940-1980 to resettle in Greece, where they received something of a lukewarm reception from the government and segments of the population. This book explores the myriad ways in which the expatriated Greeks of Turkey daily understand their contemporary difficulties through the lens of historical experience, and reimagine the past according to present concerns and conceptions. It demonstrates how the Greeks of Turkey draw upon the particularities of their own local heritages in order simultaneously to establish their legitimacy as residents of Greece and maintain a sense of their distinctiveness vis-à-vis other Greeks; and how expatriate memory activists respond to their persecution in Turkey and their marginalisation in Greece by creating linkages between their experiences and both Greek national history and the histories of other persecuted communities. Greeks without Greece shows that in a broad spectrum of different domains - from commemorative ceremonies and the minutiae of citizenship to everyday expressions of national identity and stereotypes about others - the past is a realm of active and varied use capable of sustaining multiple and changeable identities, memories, and meanings. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Table of Contents List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements PART I: Introduction Introduction Greeks without Greece: overview Terminology Methodology and sources Structure of the book Chapter 1: The Greeks of Turkey Istanbul Imbros Greece PART II: Local homelands and national belonging Chapter 2: Patrída as a local metaphor Patrída as a local metaphor Through the looking glass: continuity, invention, imposition The ‘usable past’: the everyday life of national identity Chapter 3: More than simply Hellenic: belonging andinclusive particularity The Greeks of Turkey: a diaspora community? The Helleno–Romaic dilemma ‘The Romiós is one thing and the Hellene is another’ Inclusive particularity (1): Polítes and Byzantium Inclusive particularity (2): Imvriótes and Ancient Athens Expatriate protoselves Conclusions Chapter 4: Without barbarians: Turks and Elladítes Ethnicity as an ‘interpretive prism’ Good Turk, bad Turks Nominal and experiential Turks Privileged knowledge (1): the ‘bad Turks’ Privileged knowledge (2): the ‘good Turk’ Conclusions PART III: National and transnational histories Chapter 5: Everyday multidirectional memory Holocaust memory Mediated memory An everyday history of multidirectional memory Chapter 6: ‘The Third Fall’: commemorations and national history ‘The 300 who stayed’: thinking analogically Commemorating the 1955 Istanbul Riots Commemorating the 1453 Fall of Constantinople 1453 and 1821 1453 and 1955 Transcending the national paradigm: the Federation ofConstantinopolitans Conclusions Chapter 7: ‘Kristallnacht in Constantinople’: parallel and analogous histories Parallel histories: Armenians and Kurds Analogous histories: Jews and Nazis Asymmetric histories: the Western Thracian minority From ‘pogrom’ to ‘genocide’: classifying the persecution of the Greeks of Turkey Transcultural memory in personal testimony Transnational nationalism? Conclusions PART IV: Homelands new and old Chapter 8: Welcome to Gökçeada: the Greek return to Imbros Between ‘New Imbros’ and ‘Old Imbros’ Confronting ‘the real Imbros’: challenges and prospects ‘Native tourists’: belonging in the Imvrian return ‘When you return to your patrída’: the second generation Conclusions Conclusions Inclusive particularity The past as a critical mirror Excavating and backfilling the past Everyday multidirectionality Appendix: Tables Table 1 – List of interviewees: Polítes Table 2 – List of interviewees: Imvriótes Table 3 – List of interviewees: second generation Table 4 – Decline in Greek-speaking/Orthodox Christian populationsof Istanbul and Imbros Glossary References Index