Keywords

Introduction

Deniz, before the 1960s, meetings about the issues in Cyprus were held in different parts of Turkey. We used to follow them on the radio and read about them on Hürriyet [a widely read Turkish newspaper]. The turmoil had already begun before 6–7 September 1955. Hikmet Bil, a journalist in Istanbul Ekpres, wrote that a bomb exploded in Atatürk’s house in Thessaloniki. Once people read this in the newspaper, they attacked non-Muslims’ stores and houses in Istanbul. Rumours from Istanbul about the attacks reached the Princes’ Islands before and during the attacks in Istanbul. On the 6th of September, the islanders who went to Istanbul to work and came back told us that different parts of Istanbul were being attacked by masses of people. We got scared that the island might get attacked too. My father was the party leader of the Democratic Party in Burgaz at that time and he was very much appreciated and esteemed by the islanders. He said, “Unless they kill me and step over my dead body, they will not be able to put their foot in Burgaz.” As Burgaz islanders, we ganged up together to protect our island. My father and the policemen of Burgaz and several islanders waited at the harbour and at the bays where the attackers’ boats could enter the island. We did not let anyone invade Burgaz. We hosted our non-Muslim neighbours in our houses during the night of the events, in case the island got attacked. The 6–7 September events did not happen in Burgaz. Deniz, on our island, not even a glass broke. (Ajda, Sunni Muslim Burgaz islander)

The 6–7 September events were among the most significant memories that Burgaz islanders recalled. The 1955 riots in Istanbul brought a change to Burgaz islanders’ identity. While the islanders collectively resisted the riots and that act strengthened their Burgaz identity, the riots triggered the crystallisation of the ethnic and religious identities of the non-Muslims elsewhere in Turkey. Some Burgaz islanders were in Istanbul when the attacks took place. The islanders’ memories of the riots were fragmented into memories of intolerance and violence in Istanbul and memories of conviviality on Burgaz. In this chapter, I compare and contrast the memories of the 1955 pogrom and the homogenisation process in documentaries and research with the memories articulated in Burgaz (in locally-produced documentaries, novels and memoires and interviews with the islanders). In Burgaz, the riots were articulated as memories of conviviality, because the islanders engaged in an act of solidarity and collective resistance against the riots. The islanders used digital and non-digital media to express their memories of conviviality and solidarity in critique of Turkish homogenisation policies, with the aim of reuniting and bringing back the non-Muslim Burgaz islanders, who had to leave the island. In the national framework, the riots were recalled as memories of intolerance because, the non-Muslim minorities’ ethnic and religious identities were attacked.

This chapter sheds light on the strength of conviviality in Burgaz and explores the dynamics between conviviality, toleration and intolerance by exploring the ways in which Burgaz islanders remember the homogenising Turkification policies (e.g. 1964 expulsion of the Rums with Greek citizenship) and crisis events (1955 pogrom) that impacted their lives. While some studies (Nowicka 2020) explore conviviality as acts of courtesy and individual interactions, this chapter argues that conviviality in Burgaz is a mechanism of resilience and solidarity against public and state violence. At times of crisis, when an individual or the whole island is in danger, the islanders protect each other and collectively show resistance. Memories of the resistance to the pogrom, and different acts of solidarity form a shared rhetoric that gives strength to the continuity of conviviality in Burgaz.

The islanders, even those who left, see Burgaz as a place of refuge, of conviviality and freedom. In their selective remembering (see Halbwachs 1992), they associate Burgaz with happy and beautiful memories of conviviality and separate those from the memories of toleration and intolerance that they have experienced in Turkey. Both as a physical and an imagined space, the islanders take refuge in Burgaz. Mitchell (2002) sees memory as an active and social process, which is linked to the production of social identity, building on Halbwachs (1992), Connerton (1989), and Fentress and Wickham (1992). The ways in which the islanders stress their collective resistance to the riots, talk about it, helps to construct a collective Burgazlı identity for the islanders. It is very much similar to Just’s (2000) rhetoric of solidarity and community and Mitchell’s nostalgic construction of the island community, in the ways in which the islanders narrate the resistance to the pogrom as embodying a “co-operative ethos and a strong sense of solidarity” (Mitchell 2002, 125). The shared memories of daily life and conviviality and solidarity against the rioters have a discursive effect that creates an ideology and sense of belonging to Burgaz.

6–7 September 1955 in Burgaz: “On Our Island, Not Even a Glass Was Broken”

The emergence of diversified identities, public display and expression of memories and the rise of identity politics gained momentum after the 1980 coup, through liberalisation of the economy, privatisation, an increase in import and export, global flows in and out of the country and the increase in consumerism (Neyzi 2001, 422). In the 1990s, NGOs, human rights activists, homosexuals and feminists “came out of the closet” and used the media to express their views (Neyzi 2001, 422) and works on minority history were published about “taboo” topics such as the Wealth Tax, the 6–7 September riots, and the expulsion of the Rums in 1964 (Mills 2010, 19). Furthermore, the rise of Islamism and Kurdish nationalism in the 1980s and the Alevi revival in the 1990s helped to create a kind of political and cultural pluralism (Neyzi 2001; Çolak 2006). Since the 2000s, the public sphere has seen an emerging set of personal memoirs,Footnote 1 novels,Footnote 2 movies,Footnote 3 TV and Internet series,Footnote 4 and documentaries,Footnote 5 all very critical of past governments, about the Wealth Tax in 1942, the 6–7 September 1955 pogrom, and the military coups of 1960 and 1980. For instance, Başcı (2017) has an extensive study of Turkish popular culture, in which she explored the transformation of Turkish society between 1980 and 2010, through an analysis of telecinematic productions about the 1980s coup, with a cultural studies approach.

People, who experienced the 1955 pogrom were interviewed for documentaries and research (Kuyucu 2005; Güven 2006; Mills 2010; Akar 2007; Dündar 2007). The pogrom was remembered with bitterness, fear and sorrow by Muslims and non-Muslims in Turkey as the event that caused rupture to harmony. Ara Güler, a famous Armenian photographer, used the terms “ayıp” (shame) and “insanlığın yüz karası” (opprobrium for humanity) for what happened during the riots (Dündar 2007). Despina (a Rum woman) said, “Türk kanı olan insan bunu yapamaz.” (a person who has Turkish blood cannot commit such an act, my translation) when she articulated her shock (Akar 2007). A Muslim woman in Kuzguncuk called the events “sins” (Mills 2010, 124). Mills uses “shame,” “trauma,” “a sense of betrayal,” “shock” and “mental fracture” to describe the feelings of people in Kuzguncuk (a district of Istanbul) towards the riots in their neighbourhood (Mills 2010, 109). While, in the documentaries by Akar (2007) and Dündar (2007), the shared rhetoric and the collective memory of the pogrom embeds shame and fear and the pogrom is represented as stories of intolerance and violence, Burgaz islanders’ social memory of the pogrom is that of solidarity and was articulated as a memory of conviviality, because the riots were collectively resisted and no destruction took place in Burgaz. While the riots crystallised the ethnic and religious identities of the non-Muslims in Turkey, in contrast, the collective resistance against the riots solidified more the collective Burgaz identity. The memory of the collective resistance has had a discursive character (Bakhtin 1981), in strengthening the sense of belonging, and the collective Burgazian identity. The Rums of Burgaz got torn between their memories of intolerance in Istanbul and Turkey and their memories of conviviality in Burgaz and their Burgazian identity. The ones whose memories of conviviality took over those of intolerance, stayed in Burgaz. Those who could not bear the intolerance anymore, felt the need to leave.

According to the life stories that Güven (2006) collected and the ones in the documentaries by Akar (2007) and Dündar (2007), people’s reactions to the pogrom were quite complex and incoherent. While some Muslims participated in destruction and/or reported their non-Muslim neighbours to the attackers (Güven 2006, 38), some Muslims resisted the riots, for example, by protecting non-Muslims in their houses or preventing people from destroying properties (Güven 2006; Mills 2010; Akar 2007). In Heybeliada, one non-Muslim woman said that a Muslim driver stood up at the end of the street and said that the attackers had to kill him first before they could attack the non-Muslims (Güven 2006, 37). One of Güven’s Rum informants said that the Muslim concierge protected the non-Muslim women of the building by lying to the attackers and telling them that there were no non-Muslims living in the apartment, but then he joined the attackers to wreck other non-Muslim stores. In Kuzguncuk, while many neighbours protected the non-Muslims, there were also some neighbours who joined the attackers. The silence and the denial of the collective memory of the Kuzguncuklu, (that violence did not take place in Kuzguncuk, even though it did), obscures and conceals the intolerance of the nation. The nation is rather seen as unifying in opposition to being divisive and discriminating (Mills 2010, 110). In Burgaz, the collective memory does the opposite: it critiques the homogenisation process and blames the nation for having taken their friends away.

From what the Muslims and non-Muslims said about the riots in these documentaries and studies, we know that in some parts of Istanbul and the Princes’ Islands, some Muslims protected their non-Muslim neighbours. This protective and defiant stand was not uncommon, and often came up in documentaries and research. In Burgaz, the protection of one’s neighbour was a collective act, a collective resistance, and it became a collective memory of conviviality in Burgaz, for those who witnessed it. This resistance was also articulated as a social memory, for those islanders who were not there but who moved to Burgaz later on, as this memory was regularly recalled by the islanders as an expression of Burgaz identity.

Burgaz islanders resisted the riots and did not let anybody get to the island and attack (Hazar 2005).Footnote 6 When I analysed Burgaz islanders’ resistance to the riots, I was influenced by Janet Hart’s (1996) approach. When Hart (1996) explored young women’s role in the anti-Nazi resistance in Greece between 1941 and 1944, she explored the ways in which women took part, such as cooking, taking care of the injured and wounded, fighting and defending. With a hermeneutical approach, Hart (1996, 45) analysed the ways in which people expressed their individual and group identities and gave meaning to their actions. When I conducted semi-structured interviews, and formal recorded interviews, and listened to people’s conversations, my Burgaz informants, regardless of their ethnicity or religion—Jewish, Sunni Muslim, Alevi, Rum, German—all told me the story of how the Burgaz islanders cooperated against the rioters who came to the island on boats. In Burgaz, the collective action of the islanders was very well planned and this plan was excellently executed by the islanders. Plan A was to make sure that no attacker set a foot on the island. So, Burgazlı men waited with guns at the harbours and the bays and fired their guns into the air to scare off attackers. Plan B was to resist invasion, in case attackers managed to get on the island. So, the Muslims took non-Muslim women and children into their houses to protect them (Hazar 2005; Uzunoğlu 2013).Footnote 7 One Jew (a male aged 90) and one Sunni Muslim (a male aged 80) told me that a couple of Sunni Muslims in Burgaz also wanted to cause unrest and possibly attack the non-Muslims, but they were opposed and stopped by other Burgazlı. Hence, Burgaz was protected from internal as well as external violence.

Some of my Rum informants were in Istanbul at the time of the riots. Some had their stores attacked; some had their relatives’ or friends’ houses attacked. For instance, Niko, one of my Rum informants from Burgaz, was 7 years old at the time of the riots. He recalled:

I was in the first grade of primary school. We were in our house in Kurtuluș, in Istanbul, at that time. A well-built, strong Albanian neighbour protected our house by standing outside of the building with an axe. The church next to our house was burnt. My grandmother’s house was destroyed and only the walls were left. Nothing happened to her, as she managed to escape to her neighbour’s. A line should be drawn from 6–7 September 1955 onwards, because these 6–7 September events were the point when the Rums were shocked and felt a strong inquietude, because they were physically attacked.

Niko’s memories of the riots were also fragmented into memories of intolerance and conviviality. On the one hand, as a young boy, he remembers that his grandmother’s house was destroyed, but also that the Muslim Albanian and his grandmother’s neighbour protecting them. He recalled vividly the axe that the Muslim Albanian showed the attackers to protect Niko and Niko’s family and the walls that remained from his grandmother’s house. When I interviewed Niko about his memories of Burgaz, similar to Orhan, Niko recalled the fish, the fruit, vegetable and flower gardens. When Niko recalled the riots, he said, “a line should be drawn from 6–7 September 1955 onwards.” Niko had mentioned the Wealth Tax as a bitter memory that affected the minorities but he emphasised much more the 1955 riots. The riots were significant, because he experienced them, and the riots were a collective attack that targeted his Rum identity. For this reason, he sees the 1955 riots like the beginning of an end. From that day onwards, the memories of conviviality in Burgaz became mixed with the memories of toleration and intolerance in Turkey, where Rums started to feel strongly that they were not wanted.

Ajda said that the compensation from the government to the non-Muslims for the casualties of the riots was too small. Niko said that even though the compensation was small, still it had a calming and soothing effect on the minorities, but added that Rums started to lose their trust after 6–7 September events, but they did not yet think of leaving. What Niko said was affirmed by Akgönül (2007), who considered the riots to be a shock to the non-Muslims. Akgönül compared the population censuses of 1950 and 1960, and pointed out that the Orthodox population was 86,625 in 1950 and 106,612 in 1960 (Akgönül 2007, 221–223). Hence, the 6–7 September events did not trigger the emigration of the Rums from Turkey, but they marked the beginning of a period of unbearable coexistence for the Rums. However, in the aftermath of the 1955 riots and following the political tensions between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus, the Rum islanders felt torn between their memories of conviviality that tied them to Burgaz, and their memories of coexistence and intolerance that made them uncomfortable, because they were made to feel different. The 1964 expulsion of the Rums with Greek citizenship and events in Cyprus crystallised the Rum identity more and more. In the following section, I narrate the memories of how the non-Muslims tried to cope with intolerance and how they decided whether to stay or leave.

Remembering Love and Intolerance

Ajda (Sunni Muslim woman) was one of my key informants and we recorded her life story over seven hours. Her love for Manos (Rum man) was so strong that it was impossible for her to tell her life story without telling his life story. Ajda had a peculiar position in the way she saw and interpreted the events that happened around her. Her father was an MP from the Democratic Party. While she understood Democratic Party’s aims and ways of running the government, she was critical of this party and supported the Republican Party. Ajda’s husband, Manos was not a supporter of the DP but was fond of Menderes, the prime minister at that time and the head of the DP. With her love for Manos, Ajda sees events through the Rum’s eyes. While Turkification policies (e.g. Wealth Tax, “Citizen speak Turkish campaign”), political oppression, 6–7 September 1955 pogrom wanted to make Manos more and more an Other and try to make him leave the country; his love for Ajda and Burgaz made him stay on the island, where he belonged. While Örs (2018) tells the stories of those, who left the Princes’ Islands and Istanbul, Ajda completes the pieces of the puzzle, by narrating the stories of those who stayed, and why they chose to stay.

In 1958, just a few years after the 1955 pogrom, Manos moved to Burgaz as a tenant, in one of Ajda’s father’s flats. This is how Manos and Ajda met. They became neighbours in the same building. Manos was married to his second wife; they had one daughter and a son. However, their marriage came to an end with a divorce. Manos became good friends with Ajda’s father and they hung out and drank together. When Ajda went to Istanbul for day trips, Manos used to ask her “Where have you been Ajda, what have you done?” She used to call him “Manos Ağabey, (brother)” as he was much older than her. Once she asked her father, “Dad, why don’t you ask me these sorts of questions that Manos Ağabey asks me, such as what I do, where I go?” Her father replied: “Well, Manos has lived in Istanbul and knows how Istanbul is bigger and less safe than Burgaz, and he worries about you.” Ajda did not understand that Manos was in love with her until he finally told her, “Ajoula mou, I have fallen in love with you!” She was 20 and he was almost 50 when they got together.

They dated each other secretly for 12 years between 1966 and 1978. This was the time after the 1964 expulsions of the Rums with Greek citizenship, the time when the number of Rum population had been significantly lessened and those who were not expelled were deciding to leave on their own accord. The 6–7 September events, worsening relationships between Greece and Turkey because of Cyprus, and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 was making it more and more difficult for this couple to get married. The Rums and the Turks were losing their mutual trust towards each other. Ajda’s brothers and parents were against this relationship because Manos was not a Muslim and he was almost 30 years older than Ajda and were concerned that if Manos had to leave one day, what would have happened to Ajda. As Burgaz is a small place, gossip and rumours spread quickly. This was why Manos and Ajda always had to meet in Istanbul when they used to date. Once in Istanbul they bumped into a Burgaz islander who was having a love affair with someone he should not. When, the other couple cried out “you have not seen us,” Manos and Ajda replied, “you have not seen us either!”

Some love stories between lovers from different religions could not go beyond the stage of flirting and/or dating, nonetheless intermarriages were not uncommon in Burgaz. Nükhet Sirman said in her interview with Schild (2021, 136) that there were so many intermarriages that she did not have “straight/pure” Turkish friends. Interethnic marriages were more common than inter-religious ones. In some inter-marriages, when the man was Muslim, and the woman was non-Muslim, the non-Muslim bride converted to Islam. However, on many occasions, that was not the case. One Rum woman married a Sunni Muslim man and he converted to Orthodoxy; another Rum woman and a Sunni Muslim man married and neither of them converted. Ajda told me of a Sunni Muslim woman and a Rum man, who wanted to get married. Their families did not approve so they escaped to Greece. As the woman did not want to convert, they could not get married in the church in Greece. So, they came back to Turkey to have civil wedding. The Rum husband did not convert to Islam either. In another case, an Alevi woman married an Armenian man and he converted to Islam. An English woman, an Italian woman and a Greek woman (from Greece), all married Sunni Muslim men but none of them converted. There are also many cases of intermarriages between Alevis and Sunnis in Burgaz.

After having seen the love between Manos and Ajda endure all these years, Ajda’s family accepted their relationship and they got married in 1978. She emphasised that her husband was very appreciative of her following Islam. Ajda fasts during Ramadan but she also enjoys drinking (except in the month of Ramadan). Manos used to prepare the dinner for her, before she broke the fast during Ramadan. He also used to fast with her on Kadir day (one of the most important holy nights in Islam). Furthermore, Ajda also cooked for Manos on Christmas, Easter and on important religious days. Both of them were against conversion and they encouraged each other to practise their faith. Of their years together, she enjoyed the years of marriage the most as they did not have to hide anymore and they could finally live together. She said, “It was great to wake up together, and even though I looked horrible in the morning, he used to tell me that I looked very beautiful when I had just woken up.” Unfortunately, six years after they got married, Manos died of cancer. Ajda said that “I could not eat spaghetti for years after his death as I remembered how much Manos loved spaghetti. I visited his tomb every day for a month until the priest told me that I should leave him in peace, and that he was taken care of at the moment and that I should take care of myself.” It was very hard for Ajda to accept his husband’s death. Even though she does not go to the tomb everyday today; the memories of her husband are vivid in her mind and when Ajda unfolded her story of Burgaz, she did it through her love for Manos.

Ajda’s selection of memories about Manos’ life was almost like an argument she was trying to convey. With every memory she recalled, she wanted to argue that despite every oppression from the government, and discourses of toleration and intolerance, Manos and his family resisted to stay in the land where they were born and belonged to. This was also her justification towards her family that Manos would never leave Turkey, nor will he ever leave her. She also wanted to prove that Manos was a proper citizen of the Turkish Republic, did all his duties of military service and paying taxes and he loved his country and Atatürk; however, the government behaved as if he was not, because he was Rum. So, Ajda narrated the memories of toleration and intolerance that made Manos feel as if he was an “Other,” by stressing his family’s and his resistance and endurance of this intolerance to stay in his homeland.

Ajda said: “Manos’ father died in Gallipoli during the First World War because of typhoid, while Manos and his younger brother were a few years old.” She wanted to imply that Manos’ father was not on the side of the enemy, the Greeks, but fought for Atatürk’s army. Manos was born sometime between 1912 and 1914Footnote 8 in Mudanya, outside Istanbul, in the south by the Marmara Sea. As Istanbullite Rums were exempt from the population exchange, in order to be excluded from the population exchange, Manos’ mother immigrated from Mudanya to Istanbul where her sisters used to live. She wanted to emphasise Manos’ parents’ resistance to the population exchange. Manos’ parents did not identify themselves as Greeks but as Rums. Manos and his family’s sense of belonging and identity were not ruptured by the ideologies of modern homogenous nation states. They wanted to live not in the land that belonged to “Greeks” or “Turks” but in the land where people from different faiths lived and shared conviviality. Their sense of belonging and identity is similar to the Rumpolite cosmopolitan identity that was articulated in Örs’ (2006, 2018) works. While Örs emphasises a cosmopolitan city identity, that of Istanbul, Manos and his family had a sense of belonging to a land. Manos’ family moved from Mudanya to Istanbul to stay in the homeland. Manos’ father fought in Gallipoli to protect “the land “from its enemies. “The land” I am referring to is not “Greece” or “Turkey” but an imaginary land in the minds of Manos and his family, where they felt they belonged but which did not belong to a nation. Nonetheless, Ajda stresses that if Manos and his family had to choose a nation, that would be the one that was built by Atatürk.

Ajda kept recalling moments where Rums were treated differently by the successive Turkish governments. She emphasised that even though Manos and his family had mediocre lives in Istanbul, they did not want to leave and tried everything possible to be able to stay in Turkey. Manos came from a poor background, but he managed to become a successful barber. She recalled that “Manos even cut Atatürk’s hair and Atatürk gave one piece of gold to him when Manos had his first daughter, from his previous marriage.” When the discourses of toleration and intolerance against the Rums made Rums be seen as an Other, or even as enemies, Ajda wanted to disprove this by stressing that Manos was fond of Atatürk and that he was proud of cutting his hair and the fact that he got a piece of gold from him shows their intimacy. He would never be unfaithful towards Atatürk, the founder of this Turkish nation. Ajda emphasised, “My husband was called three times to military service, against his will.” She said that first, he did the regular military service that every man has to do. She continued that the second and the third time happened back to back, one after the other. When I asked her, why he went again and again, then she explained that it was due to the fact that he could not pay the Wealth tax and that they had to build roads and work during “the military service.” Ajda did not refer to Yirmi Kur’a Nafia Askerleri, when non-Muslims were called to “military service” in May 1941, during WWII (Bali 2023). Rather than being given guns, they were sent to build roads and work in other constructions (see Bali 2023). A few months after being released from the so-called military service, those non-Muslims, who could not pay the Wealth Tax were sent to work camps in Aşkale and Erzurum, hence did two times “military service” one after the other. Ajda did not specify the difference between these two times, but referred to them both as “military service” and said peşpeşe emphasising that back to back, one after other, with very short internal, they were called back to military, against their will. Ajda emphasised this to show that Manos did all the duties the government asked of him as a male citizen of the Turkish Republic, nonetheless the state did not see him as a “proper citizen” and she still highlighted that no matter how he was treated as a non-citizen, he never thought of leaving this country, his homeland.

Ajda explained to me the psychological oppression that the Rums endured after the 6–7 September 1955 events and the 1964 expulsion. She recalled that people used to warn the minorities, who spoke their native languages by saying to them, “Speak Turkish!” She did not refer to the “Citizen speak Turkish” campaign (see Chap. 2), that took place in 1930s, but she wanted to remark that in the years between 1955s–1964, one could feel the oppression on the minorities, especially the Rums, due to the political tension between Greece and Turkey, around Cyprus. Ajda said, “Rum ayrı, Yunanlı ayrı” (Rums and Greeks are different.” As mentioned in Chap. 2, the term Rum is a Turkish word originating from “Romios” “Roman,” referring the Greek Orthodox subjects originating from The Eastern Roman Empire and Byzantine (see Saglam 2022; Örs 2006). The term “Yunan or Yunanlı” refers to Greeks of Greece (Yunanistan in Turkish) and is differentiated from the Rums/Greek Orthodox living in Turkey and Cyprus (see Saglam 2022; Akgönül 2007). Ajda emphasised that Rums came from the Byzantine Empire, that they have a sense of belonging to the lands, that now belongs to Turkey and they call Turkey their homeland. However, from 1955 onwards, in the eyes of Turkish nationalists, Rums were associated to be on Greece’s side. Once, she and Manos were on the boat to Burgaz and Manos said in Turkish with his Rum accent “My wife, our islands look so beautiful!” One man commented, “Fatih Sultan Mehmet conquered them 500 years ago!” That man recognised from Manos’ accent that he was Rum and wanted to emphasise that the islands and Istanbul were not Byzantine, but that they belonged to the Turks. These nationalistic expressions and attitudes discouraged Rums to speak Romeyka,Footnote 9 Rumca (in Turkish) and sing Rumca songs. On another occasion, Ajda was on the boat again and had a plastic bag with text in Greek letters. A man started to talk about how gloriously they had defeated the Greeks. On the basis of the Greek letters on the plastic bag, he assumed that Ajda was Rum so he wanted to offend her. What Ajda wanted to remark is that Rums belonged to Istanbul and they did not belong to Greece, neither they supported Greece and its international policies. What she complained was that Rums were seen as “others,” due to the worsening relationships between Turkey and Greece over Cyprus. It was striking that Ajda’s specific memories of toleration and intolerance took place on boats, but not in Burgaz. When she talked about Burgaz, she articulated vague memories of discomfort but did not mention any specific events, it was rather silence or denial that discourse of intolerance could exist in Burgaz. Ajda retains the fact that the word “gavur,” which means infidel and unbeliever was used for non-Muslims in Istanbul and sometimes also on the island. When I wanted to learn more about the contexts in which, the word gavur was used, she did not tell me about a specific event, or name people who used that word for the non-Muslims. Rather she said: “Gavur means infidel and unbeliever. I find it wrong to call non-Muslims “infidel and unbelievers” because they believe in God; they are not unbelievers.”

Ajda described the destruction and the vandalism of Manos’ store in Istanbul during the 1955 riots:

Manos had just opened his little cafe/sandwich place on 6 September 1955, in Beyoğlu, in Istanbul, where the majority of the store owners were non-Muslims. The till Manos had ordered from the US was destroyed. The shutters were ripped off like pieces of paper. Even though Manos was liked a lot in the neighbourhood, his store was still attacked. Manos always said: “Even though I would be exiled and deported by force by train or boat out of this land, I would still jump from the boat or the train in order to come back” Manos never thought of leaving his homeland.

Ajda juxtaposed the damage that Manos got in his store with him wanting to stay to demonstrate Manos’ resistance to intolerance and that he never thought of leaving his homeland, where he belonged. Their story was a fight for love, against all possible intolerance. In Ajda’s eyes, the reason why Manos stayed was for his love for Ajda, for Burgaz and for his homeland, where he belonged. Unlike the landscape of Kuzguncuk, where non-Muslims are absent (Mills 2010), there are many non-Muslims, who still live in Burgaz. Nonetheless, for many Rums and non-Muslims this intolerance was unbearable and holding onto conviviality in Burgaz was not enough for them to stay on the island. In Nilüfer Uzunoğlu’s documentary, we find some of the answers for why those who left, decided to leave. In the documentary, Stavros Ignatiadis expresses not being able to see a future to be able to live in Turkey by stating: “We had to leave. Life was in limbo there for us. You know when you are 22, 23, 24, 25 years old, you have to see your future, we could not see it, maybe there was one but we could not see it. That’s why we took the decision as a family, of course it was not only us.” The homogenisation process including the Wealth Tax, the 1955 riots and the expulsion of the Rums in 1964 made the non-Muslims feel that their difference made them lesser Turks, in the eyes of the political power and the Turkish public. This othering process was expressed in the form of an attack on the economic power of the non-Muslims, which also had an impact on the social life of the non-Muslims. These anxieties of feeling like “others” made the non-Muslims, especially the Rums “voluntarily” leave Turkey. Besides the fear and physical attacks like the pogrom, the cancellation of work and residence permits and the expulsion of those with Greek citizenship (see Chap. 2), the non-Muslims were also discriminated and excluded from taking jobs. Akis Tsalikis said: “Upon completing my military service, I applied for a job as a public servant; they said that I could not be hired because I was not Turkish. Such things worn me out” (Uzunoğlu 2013). Inequality and discrimination were combined with insecurity and many Rums decided to leave Turkey, even Burgaz.

The Muslim islanders pointed out that Rums left secretly. Some, like Ajda, were disappointed. Ajda said: “Rums were scared to let their planned departure be known, that somehow, they might have been prevented from leaving. For instance, I spent the whole day in Kadıköy (a district on the Asian side of Istanbul) with one of my close Rum friends from Burgaz and he left Turkey the next day, without even telling me goodbye!” Ajda was surprised that the fear and anxiety her Rum friend felt was greater than the complicity of their friendship. The islanders marked that one by one the Rums disappeared, many without saying goodbye. Nuri, Alevi Burgazlı man, narrated:

I used to play marbles with my friends [probably in the mid-1960s] and realised that my friends were gone. I did not understand why they left, as I was a child. I knew that some Rums never did military service, and later, I understood that these Rums were of Greek citizenship. Some of the ones who left were the ones who did not do military service.

The 1964 expulsion was a memory of coexistence/toleration for Nuri, because prior to that, he did not have in his mind a separate category for “Rums with Greek citizenship” and “Rums with Turkish citizenship.” Nuri realised the citizenship differences of his childhood friends at the moment when they left Burgaz. One Rum informant with Turkish citizenship recalled that when he came back from military service in 1971, the island was “empty.” For him, the existence of Rums made Burgaz a place with meaning and when many Rums left, Burgaz became empty for him. The departure of the Rum friends, who had to leave because of having Greek citizenship was an experienced consequence of coexistence/toleration, inequality and discrimination.

Burgaz islanders who stayed, both Muslims and non-Muslims argued that conviviality in Burgaz should have taken over intolerance and those who left were better off staying on the island. They articulated that leaving Burgaz made them suffer because of the pain of leaving the island and their friends, and they were treated badly in the places where they migrated. Haris, a Rum woman informant of mine, was not expelled from Turkey in 1964, because she had Turkish citizenship, but she emigrated to Greece from Burgaz with her Sunni Muslim husband because of financial difficulties in Turkey. Her husband then converted to Greek Orthodoxy and got baptised in Greece. He died there. However, Haris returned back to the island and has been staying in Burgaz every summer for the last several years. Ajda and Haris told me the deportation story of Christina, a Rum woman from Burgaz. Christina was a rakı producer, whose rakı Atatürk liked very much. Christina had Greek citizenship and when she heard that the Rums of Greek citizenship would be expelled from the country, she could not believe it. Christina said that no one could send her away because she was one of Atatürk’s favourite rakı producers. Unfortunately, she was expelled in 1964 from Burgaz to Greece. Ajda and Haris told me that Christina committed suicide by hanging herself after she went to Greece. With the story of Christina’s suicide, Ajda and Haris wanted to point out that those, who were expelled could not bear the pain of deportation. They indirectly implied that the pains of leaving for those, who left on their own accord were much worse than if they had stayed. Christina might have felt like a plant that was ripped out of the soil where she grew up and whose new place was not home to her.

Some Muslim Burgaz islanders still cannot digest the fact that their Rum friends left and they keep arguing that the Rums would have been better off if they relied on the conviviality in Burgaz and stayed. Like the story of Christina who was deported from Burgaz and committed suicide, Burgaz islanders articulated that the ones who left had horrible lives wherever they went after leaving Burgaz and some died unhappily there. For instance, Ajda said:

The Rums emigrated not only to Greece but to other parts of Europe and the US. I visited my Rum friends in Greece. Most of the Rum Princes’ Islanders, who were expelled to Greece in 1964, were given places in Paleo Faliro, a swamp area, a horrible suburb in the southern part of Athens. The Rums were looked down upon and were treated very badly by the Yunanlı (Greeks from Greece). Today if you go to Paleo Faliro, you will hear people speak Turkish in the street.

In this vignette, Ajda highlights that the Rums are different from the Yunanlıs. This means that sharing Greek ethnicity did not make them get along well. What brings people together is not their shared ethnicity but their conviviality and their shared ways of living in the place where they grow up together. What Ajda said was also confirmed in the academic literature. It was difficult for the Rums who had comfortable lives in Turkey to restart from scratch (Bilginer 2019). Rums who left played out their differences of being from Istanbul with the Turkish words they inserted in the Greek language they spoke, with the Istanbul Rum food that they cooked (Örs 2006, 2018; Yücel and Yıldız 2019).

Like Ajda, many Burgaz islanders went to visit their Rum friends in Greece. This is significant because Burgaz islanders try to maintain their bonds of friendship. They also make reunions in Greece where Burgaz islanders who left meet and also those islanders who still live in Burgaz reunite with those who left. Orhan was one of those who frequently went to Greece and commented:

I have been to Greece many times to visit my Rum friends from Burgaz. Once I went to Greece and wanted to visit Dimitri. Dimitri’s wife said that he was not at home, that he had gone to the island in Athens. I knew Dimitri was at home but he did not dare come out to see me. He was too ashamed to have betrayed us.

Orhan feels that it was a betrayal because in Burgaz, they shared a life together, had enjoyable moments, and they protected each other in times of crisis, like during the riots. Orhan interpreted that Dimitri and the Rums felt as if they (the Rums) had betrayed the Burgaz islanders by leaving their Burgaz friends. As Burgaz islanders never betrayed the Rums, the Rums should not have left Burgaz. Some of the Burgaz islanders who left the island, like Haris, returned back to Burgaz as a summer inhabitant. Today, we can find several Burgazlı who moved to Greece, Israel, the US and other countries, and who returned back to Burgaz as a summer inhabitant. They have left Turkey but they could not live away from Burgaz. As Ajda says: “you cannot divorce from the island (Adayı boşayamazsın).”

Reuniting with the Burgaz of Our Heart and Mind

The remaining Burgaz islanders were devastated by the departure of their friends. They sought for different ways to make them come back, even for a visit. They organised several reunions in Greece, where there was a significant Burgaz population. In early 2000s, they started using non-digital and digital media to articulate their memories of “good old days in Burgaz” as well as criticising the oppressive Turkish government policies to say that “we share your pain, we understand why you had to leave, but please come back, life is not the same without you.” Across digital and non-digital media productions, by writing novels, shooting documentaries, distributing them on Youtube and Vimeo, launching a Facebook group of Reunion, the remaining Burgaz islanders aimed to bring back their friends, who left Burgaz:Verse

Verse Come Yanaki mou, come to the land where you were born, Do it one day. Bring Eleni, Yorgo, Manolaki with you. Don’t come alone. Bring your childhood with you. I know that your heart still beats here. I know that you shed secret tears, You live in your memories. Look, the northwest wind is blowing. The sea is heaving its fury like it used to The Vartanos lighthouse still flashes seven short and one long beam The red brick house which you left behind without a glance still stands. Your rowboats made of paper are lined side by side awaiting your return Next to the pier. Your watermelon lanterns have gone out with the longing for you. Your sling still hangs on your bedside, your hoop made of thin wire is no longer round. The weight of yearning has crashed it. No Yanaki mou, no. Things are not the same. Without you… Engin Aktel (In Last September, 2008 and Uzunoğlu 2013)

Engin Aktel’s book, Last September (2008) and Nilüfer Uzunoğlu’s documentary (2013) start with Aktel’s poem (above), which is a call for the Burgaz islanders, who left, to return back, even for one day. In 2010, Niko Tsalikis, a Burgaz islander, who lives in Greece, opened a Facebook group and organised a Reunion event that took place on 24–29 August 2012 in Burgaz. During the reunion the restaurants by the sea united for a collective dinner and the islanders danced all night long, like in the old days. After the reunion, the islanders put photos on the Facebook page, wrote poems about their reunions, expressing feelings of nostalgia, joy and solidarity. Their reunion was also reported by Sonat Bahar (2012), in the national news, Sabah newspaper, on 2 September 2012. Bahar and her colleague Tijen Burultaj, who took photos commented that they had not seen people who had so much fun together and added that even the pouring rain could not stop their dancing and fun. Nilüfer Uzunoğlu, a Burgaz islander, made a documentary of this reunion.

Today, the group has more than 2000 members, including those, who live in Burgaz and those, who left. Every day, on this Facebook group page, Burgaz islanders, whether they are still in Burgaz or somewhere else in the world, post old photos; share their memories of conviviality; share their news about weddings, graduations, stories of success, and obituaries and celebrate each other’s important religious days, share jokes and memes. The Burgaz islanders’ memories affect people’s present life. Memories of conviviality make the Burgaz islanders, who left, come back. Like Miller (2011) says, Facebook brings back the old village, this Facebook group brought back the islanders together, not only in terms of digital connections but as a physical reunion. The islanders’ media productions and the use of digital media does not lead those islanders, who left, to settle back to Burgaz, neither they can bring back the “good old days.” Nonetheless, they help to express emotions and affect as well as to deal with the trauma of leaving and the trauma of being left. Through digital and non-digital media, they communicate these with each other, which helps their healing process.

What strikes in the social memories of the islanders, including both those in Burgaz and those who left is that that they put Burgaz at the centre of their lives. This tiny island is very “big” for them. It is a place where they have felt the freest, and they cannot find that freedom anywhere else. The islanders use the words “country, homeland, continent” when they describe Burgaz. In Uzunoğlu’s (2013) documentary, we hear these descriptions of Burgaz:

Orhan Özalp: The island of Burgaz seemed like a continent to me, like Australia, the Marmara Sea an ocean, the small fish in the sea were dolphins. The wall surrounding our yard was the Great Wall of China and I was the little adventurer of this realm.

George Andoniadis: Burgaz is a different nation, this small island is like a country to me, it is my entire life. We lived in an umbrella, where everyone knew us and we were safe. In our childish way we thought that we were free and this was a great feeling for a child.

Roberto Calich: We had too much freedom there. And this freedom has been imprinted into our mind so much that we always miss it, our lives take turns, there are things we can do, and some we cannot, but Burgaz is always on our mind. This is the reason why it is on our mind.

Doumanis (2012), in his important Before the Nation, attempts to take seriously the nostalgia of Rums displaced from Anatolia before and during the 1923 population exchange. In that nostalgia, Rums tend to assert a good life before they began to feel the effects of nation-state ideologies. However, while Doumanis sees the interactions of various religious groups in the empire as a form of everyday practice, he is never sufficiently able to solve the puzzle of its nostalgia today. I argue that this puzzle of nostalgia becomes easier to solve when one sees it as a nostalgia for a place to which one belonged that was created out of shared ways of living that encompassed and enjoyed diversity. This is different from seeing it as nostalgia for diversity itself, which suggests that we are nostalgic for specific features of other cultures. The islanders yearn for their childhood when they were all together on the island, enjoying the island life with its nature and its people.

Those who left the island have different strategies of memories and structural nostalgia (Herzfeld 2005; Mitchell 2002) from those who still live in Burgaz. The latter choose to recall and associate the memories of conviviality and solidarity with Burgaz and want to forget the memories of intolerance, which made them leave the island. Nicholas Tsalikis, who opened the Facebook group, says that when he visited Burgaz for the first time after his departure, “I collected stones, and flowers from Hristos Hill and I still keep them at home (in Greece where he lives)” (Uzunoğlu 2013). Roulis Ethnopoulos showed a very long panoramic photograph of Burgaz in his hands and narrated: “I took this photograph on my last day from my balcony, before I left the island. I took the whole view from my balcony and took it home (to Greece). Taking these pictures was like putting all of Burgaz into my pocket … and I put it in my bag and left” (Uzunoğlu 2013). Another informant of mine told me that at the reunion, she saw one of the Rums who came back reuniting and hugging a tree, saying, “the tree of my childhood.” They hold on to the pictures of their house, views and objects from Burgaz, which make them recall memories of conviviality.

The islanders, who still live in Burgaz articulate memories of intolerance, violence and oppression (not in Burgaz but outside of the island) to communicate to those who left that they understand their pains and they recall memories of conviviality to bring back their friends. Aktel’s novel Last September (2008) is written for those who left, especially the Rums. It narrates the strategies of the islanders who did not let the rioters enter Burgaz. The novel aims for one to feel the pains of the non-Muslims experienced during the destructions of the pogrom. It also blames the Turkish, Greek, British and Cypriot governments for making the Rums of Turkey pay the bill of the political problems. His argument is that no matter what the governments would like to do to divide and rule, to try to make Rums and Turks enemies, war cannot turn two friends from Burgaz into two enemies. Gogo (Rum) and Kemal (Sunni Turk) are blood brothers from Burgaz. In the novel, Gogo had to migrate to Greece and during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, he was sent as a Greek soldier to defend the Greek Cypriots against the Turks in Cyprus, where Kemal was sent as a Turkish soldier. They meet in Cyprus in the war zone during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Kemal risks his own life in order to save his childhood friend, Gogo from Burgaz. Gogo, stuck with his leg almost amputated, tells Kemal (Aktel 2008, 248), “That’s the end, Kemal. I, who was expelled from my homeland, I, who was longing for my homeland, I could not shoot as an enemy at the children of my homeland. I couldn’t, Kemal. I couldn’t” (my translation). Gogo, which is his nickname in Burgaz, chose to die instead of shooting the children of his homeland. Kemal ran in the fields with Gogo on his back, singing in Rumca, despite the warnings of the other soldiers that there were bombs falling in, in order to bring Gogo somewhere safe. Kemal gets shut and both Gogo and Kemal die holding hands like in the old days in Burgaz. This is where the difference of Burgaz lies. In the case of Burgaz, conviviality wins over coexistence and intoleration. On the island, the islanders protect the islanders against crises that come from “outside” and do not let any violence take place. Burgaz islanders, who live in Burgaz and who left it perceive the island as the place of conviviality and differentiate it from the nation that caused intolerance.

Conclusion

The message from Nedim Hazar’s documentary, like the novels of Aktel and the documentary of Uzunoğlu is friendship is over everything. Mary Tsilenis said, “you can love a place but people are also the reason” (Uzunoğlu 2013). Burgaz islanders have loved the island for various reasons, ranging from the people whom they loved, to the sea, the nature and the feelings that Burgaz made them feel, like an endless freedom. In Burgazlıs’ descriptions of Burgaz, we see the island as a heterogeneous place, a place in its multiplicity, a product of interrelations and space as connected and under construction (Massey 2005). For those who left the island, Burgaz was the place of freedom, in their childhood. Then it became a place that they had to leave during their youth because of the intolerance and the sense of insecurity that they felt in the nation, where they did not have a place. Today, it is a place of refuge and an amalgamation of memories of conviviality which they try to keep separated from those memories of intolerance. For Burgaz islanders who have stayed, it used to be the space of joy, fun and beauty and for some a space of hardship and labour. The homogenisation process took away their friends and the fun and the joy and they see the island as “empty” because their friends left and the nature is losing more and more its diversity. For some Burgazlı, it is still the place of freedom as my informant Zeynep said to me “the island starts when I put my foot on the boat and it takes me to the land of freedom.”