November 2018, Thursday, 18.00-20.00, Cezayir – Istanbul
The second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century were the years of mass displacement in the history of Ottoman Empire/Turkey. Every migration wave since the 1860s brought thousands of immigrants in the geography, as we know as contemporary Turkey. The first generation of immigrants strived for survival and adaptation in the local community.
November 2018, Thursday, 18.00-20.00, Cezayir – Istanbul
Immigrants and Locals in the Ottoman Empire and the Problems of Social Cohesion by Dr. Oktay Özel
The second half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century were the years of mass displacement in the history of Ottoman Empire/Turkey. Every migration wave since the 1860s brought thousands of immigrants in the geography, as we know as contemporary Turkey. The first generation of immigrants strived for survival and adaptation in the local community. In the long war period, which started in the 1910s, the same geography lost as many non-Muslim people as the newly arrived immigrant population. The last demographic transformation of Turkey’s geography, in this respect, happened at the dawn of a new politics of demographic engineering. The population of the newly founded Republic of the 1920s was 13 million, and almost one-third of this population was of immigrant origin who came in the last century. This presentation aims at drawing a historical picture of immigrants’ problems of integration and tense, controversial, and at times violent processes that went along with it.
Dr. Oktay Özel / Historian. He worked as a faculty member at Hacettepe University and Bilkent University. He served as a board member of History Foundation and International Association for Ottoman Social and Economic History (IAOSEH). Özel is a member of editorial board of Kebikeç (Ankara) Journal. His main research interests are population movements in Anatolia from 16th to 20th century within the framework of Ottoman social and economic history, changes in settlements and societal structure, and the Jelalis.
