75 Years of Turkish Diaspora: A Republican Family on the Move

Abstrakti

Modern Turkey has been founded on internal and international migrations.1 During the early Republican period (1920s and 1930s), large populations of Turkish nationals and Muslims were living outside the borders of the new country. After the First World War and the War of Independence, they were brought into the country and were involved in the reconstruction process of the new Turkish Republic, marking the beginning of this century’s Turkish Diaspora. Since then, Turkey has witnessed important population movements in 20th Century. Jewish scholars came from Germany and then went to the United States and Israel; remaining Greek population after the World War I, gradually left the country. Turkish workers fled to Europe, Arab countries, Australia by the 1960s onwards. Turkish nationals came from Bulgaria while Iranians escaped the Islamic Revolution (1979). Since then the Kurds escaping from the bombs of Saddam (1991) fled into the country whilst Turkish Kurds leaving for better environments massively in the last two decades. The significance of this study is twofold: first, this is a descriptive analysis of Turkish migration history combining a literature review with an oral history of a family who experienced almost all kinds of migrations during the Republican period (1923 to date). Secondly, this is a contribution to the history of Turkish migration that has not included much material on that compulsory exchange of populations about the faith of these involuntary migrants. Finally, it is innovative as attempts to reveal migration as a decisive factor affecting social change by focusing on the history of a family.