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NOTORIOUS SUBJECTS, INVISIBLE CITIZENS: NORTH CAUCASIAN RESISTANCE TO THE TURKISH NATIONAL MOVEMENT IN NORTHWESTERN ANATOLIA, 1919–23

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2008

Ryan Gingeras
Ryan Gingeras*
Affiliation:
Ryan Gingeras is Assistant Professor in the Department of History, Long Island University, C. W. Post Campus, Brookville, New York; e-mail: ryan.gingeras@liu.edu
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Extract

For contemporary Istanbulites, a trip south, across the Sea of Marmara, poses nothing exceptional or treacherous. The southern shore is often a day-trip destination for those seeking to relax or sightsee in the port towns of Yalova or Çanakkale. The Marmara's southern coast is also a stop on the road to warmer, more comfortable climes farther south, such as the holiday resorts of Kuşadası or Foça. The region stands in sharp contrast to the farthest reaches of eastern Anatolia, such as Van, Diyarbakir, or Mardin, where an insurgency by Kurdish guerrillas continues to claim lives.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 89 - 108
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

NOTES

1 There is no province or district colloquially or officially known as “the south Marmara” (Güney Marmara Bölgesi). In using this term, I primarily focus on the Ottoman/Turkish districts of Kala-ı Sultaniye/Çankkale, Karesi/Balıkesir, Hüdavendigar/Bursa, İzmit/Kocaeli, and Adapazarı/Sakarya.

2 A substantial body of memoirs, documentary studies, and scholarly work has been produced in the decades following the Turkish War of Independence. The most central is Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk's) Nutuk, the thirty-six-hour speech delivered during the Republican Peoples’ party convention of 1927. Since Atatürk's death, few works (most notably those of Erik Jan Zürcher and Taner Akçam) have deviated from the tone or conclusions of this state-sponsored narrative. See, for example, Taner Akçam, From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (New York: Zed Books, 2004); Doğan Avcıoğlu, Milli Kurtuluş Tarihi, 1838’den 1995’e (Istanbul: Tekin Yayınevi, 1995); Yusuf Çam, Milli Mücadele'de İzmit Sancağı (İzmit: İzmit Rotary Kulubü, 1993); Şerif Mardin, “Ideology and Religion in the Turkish Revolution,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 2 (1971): 197–211; Kâzım Özalp, Milli Mücadele, 1919–1922 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1985); Stanford Shaw, From Empire to Republic: The Turkish War of National Liberation, 1918–1923: A Documentary Study (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 2000).

3 Adnan Sofuoğlu, Kuva-yı Milliye Döneminde Kuzeybatı Anadolu, 1919–1921 (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basım Evi, 1994), 37–41. Sofuoğlu connects treason and actions among Anatolian Greeks and Armenians in a section he entitles “The Activities of the Minorities (Native Rum and Armenians) in Northwestern Anatolia.”

4 See, for example, Tuncay Özkan, CIA Kürtleri: Kürt Devletinin Gizli Tarihi (Istanbul: Alfa Basım Yayım, 2004).

5 This study resonates with a broad range of work on the origins of intercommunal violence during the immediate pre- and postindustrial period. Rather than view the history of Circassian resistance to the emerging Turkish nation-state as the product of some primeval or inherent tension or strife, this essay seeks to place the violent and pseudonationalist strains of North Caucasian resistance within the contexts of local politics and the pressures of a modernizing, centralizing state. Several works have influenced this turn in my approach. See, for example, Anton Blok, The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860–1960: A Study of Violent Peasant Entrepreneurs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974); Ranajit, Guha, Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Ussama, Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community History and Violence in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Gyanendra, Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

6 I have chosen to use “North Caucasian” and “Circassian” interchangeably. Although I recognize that there are certain discrete differences between the two terms (Circassian tends to refer to Adige-, Ubih-, or Abkhazian-speaking peoples), Ottoman and Western documents generally apply “Circassian” to all peoples of the North Caucasus.

7 Kemal, Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830–1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 69Google Scholar; Toledano, Ehud R., Slavery and Abolition in the Ottoman Middle East (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Press, 1998), 84Google Scholar. According to Toledano, anywhere between 595,000 and one million Circassians came to the Ottoman Empire between 1855 and 1866. Karpat estimates that up to two million North Caucasians, mostly Adige, came between 1859 and 1879. After 1879, Karpat approximates the number of Caucasian refugees around half a million.

8 Karpat, Ottoman Population, 57. Karpat, in his study of demographic trends during the last century of Ottoman rule, reckons that the Kurdish population of Anatolia stood at one and a half million during the 1880s. Although perhaps a conservative estimate, Karpat's figure emphasizes the enormity of the Circassian diaspora in the Ottoman Empire. Why the legacy of North Caucasian resistance in the south Marmara remains largely absent from contemporary public consciousness becomes even more curious in light of the profound impact that Kurdish resistance in places such as Dersim has had on the transition from empire to nation-state in Anatolia.

9 Marc, Pinson, “Ottoman Colonizaton of the Circassians in Rumeli after the Crimean War,” Etudes Balkaniques 3 (1972): 71–85Google Scholar.

10 Nedim İpek, Rumeli'den Anadolu'ya Türk Göçleri (1877–1890) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1994), 185; Raif Kaplanoğlu, Bursa'da Mübadele (Orhangazi, Turkey: Avrasya Etnografya Vakfı, 1999), 135. Nedim İpek cites an estimate of 29,886 of North Caucasians in the province of Bursa at the turn of the 20th century. Raif Kaplanoğlu cites one survey done under Greek occupation in 1922 that estimated 108,000 North Caucasians in the sancak of Hüdavendigar alone.

11 İpek, Türk Göçleri, 187–88, 198, 200.

12 PRO/FO 371/3418/199234, 3 December 1918.

13 Ibid.; Toledano, Slavery and Abolition, 106. Speaking of Circassian colonies in the Ottoman Empire, the reporting British officer in this file states flatly, “Their [the Circassian communities’] influence is merely local, but, inasmuch as they are lawless and vindictive, it is real. They are most fanatical, and, as such, can always be relied on by the Government at Constantinople . . .”

14 Toledano, Slavery and Abolition, 102–4.

15 Hüsameddin Ertürk and Samih Nafiz Tansu, İki Devrin Perde Arkası (Istanbul: Ramazan Yasar, 1969), 120.

16 Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die türkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg, Germany: Hamburger Edition, 1996), 318–19; Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye'de Siyasal Partiler: İttihat ve Terakki, Cilt III (Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfı Yayınları, 1989), 283.

17 İzzet Aydemir, Muhaceretteki Çerkes Aydınlar (Ankara: n.p., 1991), 9; Sefer Berzeg, Türkiye Kurtuluş Savaş'ında Çerkes Göçmenleri, Cilt II (Istanbul: Ekin Yayıncılık, 1990) 9, 34. Founded in 1914, the Şimali Kafkas Cemiyeti was an organization formed to promote the CUP's interests in the North Caucasus. Through the actions of this committee a rebellion was sparked in Ajaria (in southwestern Georgia) at the start of World War I (an action Yusuf İzzet was instrumental in fomenting). See Arsen Avagyan, Osmanlı İmparatorluğu ve Kemalist Türkiye'nin Devlet-İktidar Sisteminde Çerkesler (Istanbul: Belge Yayınları, 2004), 134–39.

18 BOA.DH.ŞFR 75/156, 15 April 1917.

19 BOA.DH.ŞFR 89/61, 61-1, 12 July 1917; BOA.DH.ŞFR 89/105, 16 July 1917; BOA.DH.ŞFR 92/155, 14 October 1918; BOA.DH.ŞFR 96/95, 8 February 1919; BOA.DH.ŞFR 96/122, 9 February 1919; BOA.DH.ŞFR 96/330, 27 February 1919; BOA.DH.ŞFR 97/351, 31 March 1919.

20 Erik Jan Zürcher, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish Nationalist Movement, 1905–1926 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 84–86.

21 Fahri Can, “Birinci Dünya Harbından Sonra İlk Milli Kuvvet Nasıl Kuruldu?” Yakın Tarihimiz 1, no. 2 (10 May 1962): 334.

22 PRO/FO 371/4157/62437, 5 April 1919.

23 “Kazım Özalp Anlatiyor,” Yakın Tarihimiz 2, no. 20 (5 July 1962): 153; İlhan Selçuk, Yüzbaşı Selahattin'in Romanı, Cilt II (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 1975), 58–59; Muhittin Ünal, Miralay Bekir Sami Günsevʿin Kurtuluş Savaşı Anıları (Istanbul: Cem Yayınevi, 2002), 27–30. Rauf Orbay's own recollections of this event are somewhat vague. See Cemal Kutay, Osmanlı'dan Cumhuriyet'e Yüzyılımızda bir İnsanımız, Hüseyin Rauf Orbay, 1881–1964 (Istanbul: Kazanç Kitap Ticaret, 1995), 356–58.

24 Hacim Muhittin Çarıklı, Balıkesir ve Alaşehir Kongreleri ve Hacim Muhittin Çarıklı ʾnın Kuva-yı Milliye Hatıraları, 1919–1920 (Ankara: Türk Inkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü, 1967), 24.

25 Zühtü Güven, Anzavur İsyan: İstiklâl Savaşı Hatıralarından Acı Bir Safha (Ankara: Türkiye Iş Bankası, 1965), 27–28.

26 BOA.DH.KMS 54-3/68, 19 August 1919; PRO/FO 371/5047/4272, 6 May 1920; PRO/FO 371/5054/9302, 3 August 1920; PRO/FO 371/4160/154462, 22 November 1919; PRO/FO 371/4161/161867, 12 November 1919.

27 “Pomak” is a term applied generally to Bulgarian-speaking Muslims. Large numbers of Pomak immigrants and refugees from the Rhodope Mountains settled in the county of Biga.

28 Güven, Anzavur İsyan, 18–23.

29 BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 9/38, 22 May 1919; BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 16/27, 19 July 1919; BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 18/119, 8 August 1919. This conflict between Albanians and the Yetimoğlu family from Georgia appears to have been a continuation of tensions that emerged in World War I. By July 1919, it was reported that the two sides had come to a truce.

30 BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 9/38, 24 May 1919; BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 34/24, 4 March 1920; BOA.DH.KMS 55-2/56, 16 September 1919; BOA.DH.KMS 55-3/20, 4 October 1919.

31 BOA.DH.KMS 55-3/29, 30 October 1919.

32 BCA 272.11.11.32.25, 10 November 1917.

33 Ünal, Bekir Sami, 197.

34 Çarıklı, Balıkesir ve Alaşehir Kongreleri, 102.

35 Ibid., 96.

36 Ibid., 97–98.

37 Özcan Mert, “Anzavur'un İlk Ayaklanmasına Ait Belgeler,” Belleten 56, no. 217 (1992): 847.

38 Sabri, Yetkin, Ege'de Eşkıyalar (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2003), 162–69Google Scholar.

39 Özer, Kurtuluş Savaşında Gönen, 56.

40 BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 49/63, 5 January 1921; Harb Tarihi Vesikaları Dergisi 5, no. 18 (1956): Document 452; Mert, “Anzavur'un İlk Ayaklanmasına,” 905.

41 Uluğ İğdemir, Biga Ayaklanması ve Anzavur Olaylar Günlük Anılar (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1973), 3–13.

42 BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 39/37, 26 April 1920.

43 BOA.DH.KMS 60-2/10, 19 April 1921.

44 İğdemir, Biga Ayaklanması, 59. Most of the ammunition and money that fuelled Anzavur's insurgency against the National Forces in the south Marmara came, by Anzavur's own admission, from Istanbul.

45 Harb Tarihi Vesikaları Dergisi 4, no. 11 (1955): Document 272; Ünal, Bekir Sami, 219.

46 Harb Tarihi Vesikaları Dergisi 6, no. 19 (1957): Document 476; PRO/FO 371/5047/4272, 6 May 1920.

47 BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 29/45, 31 December 1919; Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk-Söylev (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1989), 1649–653.

48 A case in point of how this rage manifested itself in the south Marmara can be seen through the experiences of Mehmet Rüştü, an anti-Nationalist trader of lumber and agricultural goods. He was instrumental in organizing rebel activity in Biga, yet his home fell victim to Gavur İmam's raiding Pomaks after the battle for Biga. In a letter sent to the Interior Ministry, Mehmet Rüştü argues that he played a mediating role during Biga's occupation and had fled the town for Istanbul before the fighting broke out, on 16 March 1920. Ironically, his home was looted a second time by the Kuva-yı Milliye upon his return from the capital. See BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 40/18, 6 May 1920.

49 İğdemir, Biga Ayaklanması, 34. One villager complains, “Should a tax be one tree in eight or one chicken in eight? But Hamdi Bey would do this. One ox from seven households is enough and one sheep from each household is more even. But he said to give the Kuva-yı Milliye the hundred sheep that are in your possession. Is it really supposed to be like that?”

50 Ibid., 13.

51 Keep in mind that the political nature of the National Movement was actively debated in the Istanbul (particularly loyalist) press. Considering the personalities that followed Mustafa Kemal into Anatolia, many assumed that the Kuva-yı Milliye was simply a repackaged version of the CUP. See, for example, “Harekat-ı Milliye—İttihat ve Terakki,” Alemdar, 6 October 1919.

52 Canip Bey, Bursa'da İşgal Günlüğü (Bursa Vilayetinde Yunan Fecayii) (Istanbul: Düşünce Kitabevi Yayınları, 2004), 245.

53 BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 54/30, 19 June 1921; BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 55/65, 21 August 1921; BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 57/10, 23 October 1921; BOA.DH.EUM.AYŞ 62/11, 2 July 1922.

54 İbrahim Ethem Akıncı, Demirci Akıncıları (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1989), 216–17.

55 Ibid., 285.

56 Ibid., 32–33.

57 BOA.DH.İUM 20/28/14/77, 13 August 1921. This document suggests that the organization and intentions of the Near Eastern Circassian Association was known three weeks before the commencement of the meeting.

58 BOA.DH.KMS 60-3/26, 31 December 1921.

59 Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye'de Siyasal Partiler: Mütareke Dönemi, Cilt II (Istanbul: Hürriyet Vakfı Yayınları, 1989), 589–91.

60 PRO/FO 371/5171/13982, 16 October 1920.

61 See David, Edwards, “Mad Mullahs and Englishmen: Discourse in the Colonial Encounter,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1989): 647–70Google Scholar.

62 Fahri Görgülü, Yunan İşgalinde Kirmasti (Mustafakemalpaşa) (Mustafakemalpaşa: Yeni Müteferrika Basımevi, 1960), 50. According the account given by a retired gendarme, the declaration was secretly circulated to small meetings of Circassian notables after the Izmir congress.

63 PRO/FO 371/5171/13982, 16 October 1920.

64 Ibid.

65 PRO/FO 371/6580/13914, 13 December 1921.

66 Zülfikar Ali Aydın, İkinci Susurluk: Bir Kasaba Cinneti (Istanbul: Metis Yayınevi, 2002), 50.

67 Rıza Nur, Hayat ve Hatıratım, Cilt III (Istanbul: Atındağ Yayınevi, 1968), 952; PRO/FO 371/7919/14515, 12 December 1922.

68 BCA 30.10.105.688.9, 12 May 1923; Emrah Cilasun, Bâki İlk Selam (Istanbul: Belge Yayınları, 2004), 212–13; PRO/FO 371/7919/14515, 12 December 1922; Mehmed Fetgerey Şoenu, Çerkes Mes'elesi (Istanbul: Bedir Yayınevi 1993), 62–64.

69 Şoenu, Çerkes Mes'elesi, 71–77.

70 Kamil, Erdeha, Yüzellilikler yahut Milli Mücadelenini Muhasebesi (Istanbul: Tekin Yayınları, 1998), 229–30Google Scholar.

71 Erik, Jan Zürcher, “Young Turks, Ottoman Muslims and Turkish Nationalists: Identity Politics 1908–1938,” Ottoman Past and Today's Turkey, ed. Kemal, Karpat (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 174Google Scholar.

72 Söner Çagaptay, “Crafting the Turkish Nation: Kemalism and Turkish Nationalism in the 1930s” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2003), 218–21.

73 See Alexandre Toumarkine, “Kafkas ve Balkan Göçmen Dernekleri: Sivil Toplum ve Milliyetçilik,” Türkiye'de Sivil Toplum ve Milliyetcilik, eds. Stefanos Yerasimos et al. (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2001), 425–50.

74 Also see Ayhan, Kaya, “Cultural Reification in Circassian Diaspora: Stereotypes, Prejudices and Ethnic Relations,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31 (2005): 129–49Google Scholar.

75 Ahmet, Efe, Gizli Kalmış Bir İhanet: Çerkez Kongresi ve Çerkez Ethem (Istanbul: self-published, 2004)Google Scholar.

76 Miroslav, Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 107–16Google Scholar.

77 Avagyan, Çerkesler, 132–35.

78 A fairly outspoken Nationalist defender of North Caucasians was Hakkı Hami (Ulukan), Sinop's representative in the Ankara parliament during the War of Independence. During a session on 3 November 1922, Hakkı declared to thunderous applause on the floor of the assembly that “Turks and Circassians were close relatives” (Çerkeslerle Türkler et tırnak olmuşlardır). By the same token, those North Caucasians who sided with the Greek army forfeited their devotion to Islam and became Christians (tanassur etmi). T.B.M.M. Zabıt Ceridesi, Cilt 24 (Ankara: TBMM Matbaası, 1960), 367; Muhittin Ünal, Kurtuluş Savaşında Çerkeslerin Rolu (Ankara: Tavak Matbaası, 2000), 140–41.

79 Bülent Özbelli, “Başbakan Erdoğan ve Kafkas-Abhazya Dayanışma Komitesi Görüşmesinden Notlar,” Nartajans, www.nartajans.net/nuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=534 (accessed 10 December 2006).