Muslim or Turkish?: Immigration from the Balkans in Early Republican Turkey

• In Event: New Approaches to Displacement, Citizenship, and Statelessness in Twentieth-Century East Central Europe and the Balkans

Abstract

After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, many former Ottoman, Russian, and Habsburg subjects arrived in the Turkish Republic as refugees. By far the largest number of arrivals came from the Balkans. Between 1923 and 1939, over 800,000 Muslims from Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Yugoslavia arrived in Turkey. The Turkish government instituted policies that favored immigrants who were “affiliated with Turkish culture.” This paper examines the immigration legislation and its implementation in early republican Turkey. I show that, despite the government’s ethno-national rhetoric, republican policies maintained a remarkable continuity with late Ottoman practices. One’s religious identity largely determined their admission into Turkey and the limits of their Turkishness.

Author

• Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, UC Santa Barbara