GONUL’S REMARKS EVOKE REMINISCENCES IN THE RUMS

Hurriyet
Nov 18 2008
Turkey

The remarks by Defense Minister Vecdi Gönul last week that population
exchange at the beginning of the Turkish Republic was necessary for
the building of a Turkish nation state, have already been harshly
criticized in Turkey. The minister himself has claimed his remarks
were misunderstood. Yet, in his speech at the Turkish Embassy
in Brussels, his position was clear, "If there were Greeks in the
Aegean and Armenians in most places in Turkey today, would it be the
same nation-state? I do not know what words I can use to explain the
importance of the population exchange, but if you look at the former
state of affairs, its importance will become very clear."

For the past four years, with my colleague Haluk Ucel of Bilgi
University, we have been trying to put together a documentary to show
the present state of the community of the Rums, the Greek Orthodox and
Greek-speaking Turkish citizens of Istanbul. Their stories may not
be directly related to the target group of the defense minister, as
the Rums of Istanbul were subject to deportations due to the Turkish
state in of the 1950s and 1960s. But precisely because they are the
still living witnesses of these relatively recent events, they can tell
their stories. A very small portion of the once thriving community of
over 100,000 members, live today in Istanbul, struggling to overcome
their psychological trauma from past wounds and win over fear and
suspicion about the honesty of any Turkish government toward them.

We talked to many of them. We talked to well known Turks who cannot
remember their childhood without their friends "Lefteris, Costas,
Eleni" who suddenly disappeared from their street plays in Pera. And we
talked to the ones who, after being expelled from Istanbul or having
left in fear after 1955, now live with their sepia photos and albums
of the city, still not able to fully integrate into Greek society. We
also talked to their children, their first memorable experiences in
life connected with an unexpected, "man in a dark suit," coming one
evening to their apartment, after which their mother began packing
their belongings. We found them in Athens where they live, cry and
remember. In spite of the thaw in the Greek-Turkish relations after
the 1990s, numerous initiatives taken on a citizen’s level between
the two countries, in spite of the many joint projects to increase
understanding, analyze history, promote cooperation, think positively
toward the future; the Rums we talked to have a longer memory than
us. They prefer grief to joy, fear to friendship, suspicion to
optimism. Instead of any other comments, I will give you some small
extracts of what children of that period, now in their 50s, told us:
"I was born in 1957. I left Turkey when I was seven. I remember the
day of the deportations, some police officers came to the house to
announce the decision to my father. We were getting ready to go to
the cinema with family friends, as soon as people we had not not
expected rang our doorbell, I immediately understood, instinctively,
that something bad was happening. Two gentlemen came in who were very
polite to my father and said certain things to him which I found out
much later. I immediately understood this was not something pleasant
and I went into my room and began to cry…"

"There was a climate of increased tension, not so much religious,
but let us say ethnic conflict. People who were your neighbors, as an
example, let us say, the butcher of the neighborhood, sharpening his
knife in a strange manner and saying strange things to my mother. All
these events took place suddenly. I was born in 1951. I have a very dim
recollection of the September ’55 events because I was very little,
in a month’s time I would have been four years old. Nevertheless,
a curious thing! It appeared the moment was very intense, I remember
very faintly that I lived through something very intense; stones
breaking window panes in the house. It is curious, but I do not
remember anything else before the age of six."

These Rums, whose childhoods were marked by such events, are confused
today.

"While we were hoping that the European prospects of Turkey will
help to heal wounds, we see a certain irresolution around certain
issues. This creates confusion in us. Of course we do not know whether
this situation will protract, or if in the future, changes will take
place in order to make us more optimistic."

But what makes them somewhat optimistic is, "we hear certain voices,
perhaps not so many as we would like to, but in any case, at least
some people exist in Turkey who see minorities through different eyes."

Still, even among the most open minded, sophisticated, cultured Rums,
who have proved their genuine wish to heal old wounds and contribute
to a new era of understanding, we find deeply rooted obstacles blocking
a smooth approach toward Turkey.

"I left in ’64 and went back to Istanbul in 1994, 30 years later! I
cannot define precisely why it took me so long. It was fear, a fear
which could have been partly real and partly fantasy. Of course,
how can you feel positively about a place that you were kicked out
of? That is to say, do you go back to a place you were kicked out of?"

(NB. I would like to thank my old and new Greek American friends
Apostolos, Gregory, Andreas, Linos for pointing out that the computer
produced sign appearing last week was a hoax. Of course it was. But
I would like to ask them to look more carefully on the last sentence
of the story and not so much on the first.)

–Boundary_(ID_kccw36vtobpCvpnF1v0ieQ)–