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Protesting exile: Cretan refugee activists in the late Ottoman Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2024

Uğur Zekeriya Peçe Open the ORCID record for Uğur Zekeriya Peçe [Opens in a new window]
Uğur Zekeriya Peçe*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, USA
*
Email: uzp218@lehigh.edu
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Abstract

Focusing on the long aftermath of the July Revolution of 1908 in the Ottoman Empire, this article examines the intellectual and popular climate of protest in the context of a crisis of sovereignty over Crete. Keeping the geographical focus on İstanbul and on the regions receiving tens of thousands of civilians displaced from this Mediterranean island around the turn of the twentieth century, I discuss how multiple segments of a refugee population animated a mass protest movement. Pursuing a multi-class perspective, the article demonstrates how the mobilization of the displaced rested on the actions of mutually reinforcing social clusters: an upper-class cohort of Cretans based in İstanbul and more numerous but equally vocal underprivileged groups from the provinces. Approaching displacement as a condition that generates not only victimhood but also impetus for collective action, I argue that the displaced Cretans became the leading agents of mass politics in the post-revolutionary Empire.

Keywords

CretedisplacementOttoman Empireprotestrefugees
Type
Article
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 70 , May 2024 , pp. 32 - 51
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of New Perspectives on Turkey

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