In the new episode of the podcast The Southeast passage, Elif Becan discusses the integration of Muslim migrants from the Balkans into the Turkish Republic during the interwar period
The repatriation of Muslim refugees from the lost territories in the Balkans to Anatolia became an urgent issue for Ottoman territorial and settlement policies since the war against the Russian Empire in 1877-1878. After the foundation of the Republic of Turkey and until the 1950s, this practice continued, although migrants were settled along new criteria of identification with the state: Islam, post-imperial legacy, and bonds to the Turkish nation. Beside the bureaucratic process of naturalization, however, the integration of Balkan Muslims into Turkish society followed different patterns and results.
In this episode Elif Becan and Andreas Guidi discuss the dynamics establishing a “mutual loyalty” between the migrants and the state, through factors such as neighborhood communitarianism, founding of associatons, and reappropriation of historical terms such as “Evlad-i Fatihan” (Children of the conquerors).
This is an excerpt of a longer episode produce within the series The SouthEast passage. The entire podcast in available for download here .
The Southeast Passage is a podcast about the history and the society of the Balkans and beyond. Researchers from various countries present their ongoing projects and discuss about the relevance of their topics inside and outside academia.
