Remembering Smyrna/Izmir: shared history, shared trauma.

This article uses the oral history narrative of an elderly Smyrniote/Izmirian woman born in 1915 to interpret memories of war and violence in the context of contemporary debates on history, memory and identity in the public sphere in Turkey. In narrating the occupation and burning of Izmir and the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish war, Gulfem Iren makes recourse to two different and seemingly contradictory discourses: the Turkish nationalist discourse, which attempts to account for the violence, including its silencing afterwards; and a local Izmirian discourse, which empathizes with the losers, those forced into exile--or worse--as a result of the war. The emphasis on the Izmirian discourse in the narrative demonstrates the joint effects of nostalgic cultural representations of the past and acrimonious and increasingly divisive debates on the history of the establishment of the Turkish Republic in Turkey today.

INTRODUCTION

In this article, I analyze the oral history narrative of a Smyrniote/Izmirian woman born in 1915 who witnessed as a child events central to the establishment of modern Turkey--the symbolic meaning of which continues to resonate in the present--including the occupation and burning of Smyrna/Izmir and the lesser-known burning of Manisa. In contrast with the complex and contradictory ways these events were experienced by individuals, there is no room for ambiguity in their depiction in Greek or Turkish national history, which mirror one another. (1) While the Asia Minor "disaster" is mourned in Greece, it is the "liberation" of Izmir that is commemorated in Turkey. (2)

The memories of Gulfem Kaatcilar Iren are of historical value as few individuals of her generation and background remain alive today. Analyzing the ways Iren remembers the past in the present also contributes to contemporary debates on history, memory and identity in Turkey. As I show below, Gulfem Iren's narrative includes two seemingly contradictory discourses. One is Turkish nationalist discourse, which Iren refers to in order to account for the violence perpetrated in Izmir, including the silencing of its memory. The other is an Izmirian discourse, which allows her to remember the shared history and trauma experienced by the natives of the city, and to make a plea for taking responsibility for the wrongs committed in the past.

Turkish nationalism has its origins in the late Ottoman period, when continual defeat in war and loss of territory resulted in a sense of victimhood and fear of colonization. As the Ottoman Empire fell apart, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress strove to build a new basis for belonging based on an imagined Turkic ethnic identity, the Turkish language and Muslim origin. (3) During the late nineteenth century, the loss of Ottoman provinces resulted in a flood of Muslim refugees into Asia Minor. (4) The ideology of Turkish nationalism redefined Ottoman Christian and Jewish subjects as outsiders, and the ruling elite planned to settle Muslim immigrants on the property of Ottoman Christians, whose so-called relocation (tehcir) would be justified vis-a-vis the threat of Armenian nationalism. (5) At the end of World War I, what remained of the Ottoman Empire was occupied by the Allies. With the support of the British, the Greek army invaded Izmir in 1919. It was the resistance initiated by the charismatic Mustafa Kemal, an official in the Ottoman army, who defied both the Ottoman Sultan and the Europeans, that would turn the tide. After a long and bloody battle, the Kuvayi Milliye (nationalist forces) won the war on several fronts: against the Greeks in the west, the Russians and Armenians in the east, and the French in the south. This was not only a fight against foreign occupation: it also took the form of internecine warfare. Christian Ottoman subjects were caught between communities to which they belonged by residence and citizenship and those to which they belonged by faith. While mobilized by the Ottoman army, some deserted to join the forces fighting the Ottomans. (6)

Although Mustafa Kemal's forces won the battle against colonization, the sense of inferiority vis-a-vis Europeans could not be easily overcome. The Turkish Republic, established in 1923, necessitated a new national history. The population now resident in Asia Minor--many of whom were recent immigrants--was conceptualized as a homogeneous group with a shared history, ethnic/religious identity and language. (7) The Greek and Turkish state agreed to a population exchange in which the remaining Greek-Orthodox population of Asia Minor would be exchanged with Muslims from Greece. (8) In fact, an ideology predicated on faith was not enough to compensate for the loss of one's native land and way of life, and immigrants in both Greece and Turkey felt like and were treated as outsiders for generations. (9) Under the Turkish Republic, most members of remaining Christian and Jewish communities were either forced or felt compelled to leave due to a variety of discriminatory policies and actions. (10) The modernist project of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was enforced in ways that left little room for opposition. Resistance, whether originating from within the ruling elite, the religious right, the Kurds or the left, was crushed. Despite the turn to multiparty politics in the 1950s, democracy was curtailed by several military coups, most recently on September 12, 1980. Since the emergence of an armed struggle for Kurdish independence in the early 1980s, Turkish nationalism has been challenged--and redefined--by Kurdish nationalism, an ideology that developed in part as a reaction to the Turkish state policy of assimilation. (11)

Since the 1980s, Turkey's incorporation into the circuits of global capital has been accompanied by a new discourse of the self and the emergence of identity politics. (12) The rediscovery of silenced ethnic and religious identities influenced by the experiences of immigrants and refugees from Turkey in Europe, the violence between the Turkish state and the Kurdish nationalist movement (with its heavy toll on fighters and civilians, both physical and emotional), Turkish-Greek rapprochement, the debate over Turkey's application for entry into the European Union, the electoral success of the religious right, increasing tension between the ruling Islamists and the secularists dominating the army, state bureaucracy and the urban educated middle class, and the rise of private and powerful mass media, are among the factors that have resulted in a highly politicized and emotional debate in the public sphere on the history of the establishment of the Turkish Republic and the bases of belonging in Turkey. (13)