I have no Country, I have a homeland
Istanbulite Romiois:Place- Memory- Migration
Summary
Excerpt
Table Of Contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- About the editors
- About the book
- This eBook can be cited
- Table of Contents
- Preface/Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Anthropological Journey
- Questions, questions…
- Show your colors! – Fading colors…
- Who are Greek, Romioi, Hellenic?
- The meaning of difference – “Let’s keep a low profile”
- Narrowing the subject: “How am I going to do this?”
- The excitement of stepping out into the field
- How possible is “objectivity”?
- Fieldwork
- The identity, position and production of the researcher
- Getting down the writing
- Getting acquainted with mistakes: Realizing and learning
- The routes of the journey
- Chapter 2 The Memory of the City
- Looking backward
- Byzantion, Constantinople, Istanbul
- Byzantion
- Constantinople
- Istanbul – the fall/conquest of the City
- The Ottoman Romioi
- The first period (15th century–19th century)
- Years of transformation (19th and 20th centuries)
- Chain of events
- Chapter 3 Being Romioi Orthodox: “I went to the corner store, ‘he said you’re Romioi’, so what, an alien, or what?”
- He just has to call me infidel!!
- Turkification, nationalism, nation, ethnic group
- Visibility-invisibility
- Language: “Shush now, be quiet, they’ll hear you…”
- “Ancient”, “Modern” Greek261
- Greek/Romioi language
- Limitations of language
- Religion-rituals: “We understood that we were minorities that way”, “characteristics of being Romioi”
- “Internal” – “external” borders
- Unbreakable bonds
- Example for boundaries: “The worst thing you could have done, was to marry a Turk”
- “We are not one of them!!”
- Chapter 4 Migration
- Decision to migrate: “They left in tears”
- “Voluntary”- involuntary migration
- Those who left – Those who stayed
- Fear-worry: “Always a fear, an uneasiness…”
- Power is everywhere: “We have concrete fears inside …”
- Inability to return: “What if something had happened to that heaven?”
- Settling in Athens: “They never liked us, not at all” – “Mythos”
- Acceptance – recognition
- A “new” place, a “new” life: “We are lost in the crowd…”
- Friendship, neighbors: “I would not trade them for anyone, no one…”
- To be a friend: “I thought that I could not become friends with a Turkish child”
- Staying friends: “He/she is Romioi; he/she is Romioi too…”
- Chapter 5 Place and Memory
- Place
- Space – place
- Istanbul
- “Sacred” place
- Sanctification: “We are from here, we have been here for thousands of years”
- Cemeteries: “A meeting place in Istanbul, a foreign concept in Athens”
- Autobiographical sanctity
- Familiar-foreign-guest-native
- “Foreign” names
- Strangers of both places
- “Strangers” at “Home”
- Memory
- Nostalgia, homesickness
- Individual, collective, cultural memory
- The sensation of past
- Tastes and food
- Sound
- The beautiful years of my childhood – a bitter pain
- Continuity-discontinuity, “I passed this on to my children”
- “Let me spend my old ages in Istanbul!”
- Continuity in Istanbul
- Epilogue
- Roots, sacred-social
- Should we go or not?
- Romioi / Greek in Istanbul, Turkish in Athens
- “Sacred” Memory of the space/City
- “And curtain! Well, let’s not say that…”
- General evaluation
- Last word
- Bibliography
- Appendix
Bibliographic Information published by the
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available online at
http://dnb.d-nb.de.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the
Library of Congress.
Original book title in Turkish:
“Vatanım Yok Memleketim Var, İstanbul Rumları: Mekân-Bellek-Ritüel
Publisher: İletişim Yayınları, Istanbul, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-975-05-1823-2
Translated by Arda Akbaş and Fatima Sakarya
Academic proofreading by Nurdan Türker
Cover Illustration : Sebla Selin Ok
ISBN 978-3-631-83298-1 (Print) ∙ E-ISBN 978-3-631-84130-3 (E-PDF)
E-ISBN 978-3-631-84131-0 (EPUB) ∙ E-ISBN 978-3-631-84132-7 (MOBI)
DOI 10.3726/b17823
© Nurdan Türker, 2020
Peter Lang – Berlin ∙ Bern ∙ Bruxelles ∙ New York ∙ Oxford ∙ Warszawa ∙ Wien
Open Access: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license,
visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
This publication has been peer reviewed.
About the editors
Nurdan Turker studied Political Science and International Relations. She finished her graduate study in the Photography Department in the Faculty of Fine Arts and completed her PhD in Social Anthropology. Her research interests include cultural studies, visual anthropology and visual narratives.
About the book
Nurdan Türker
I have no Country, I have a Homeland
The book explores the concepts of migration, space, memory and identification drawn from the experiences of Istanbulite Romiois/Greeks and through the notion of being minority. The primary problematic examined in this book revolves around the meaning of these concepts, the functions they serve, and how they are related to the identity of minorities who have experienced ruptures like mass migrations. The concepts such as place and memory are addressed through the way in which Istanbulite Romiois/Greeks create meaningful connections around spaces, identity and memory as evidenced by spatial arrangements and how space in general and in Istanbul is specifically rendered sacred.
This eBook can be cited
This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Anthropological Journey
Show your colors! – Fading colors
Who are Greek, Romioi, Hellenic?
The meaning of difference – “Let’s keep a low profile”
Narrowing the subject: “How am I going to do this?”
The excitement of stepping out into the field
How possible is “objectivity”?
The identity, position and production of the researcher
Getting acquainted with mistakes: Realizing and learning
Chapter 2 The Memory of the City
Byzantion, Constantinople, Istanbul
Istanbul – the fall/conquest of the city
The first period (15th century–19th century)
Years of transformation (19th and 20th centuries)
He just has to call me infidel!!
Turkification, nationalism, nation, ethnic group
Language: “Shush now, be quiet, they’ll hear you…”
“Internal” – “external” borders
Example for boundaries: “The worst thing you could have done, was to marry a Turk”
Decision to migrate: “They left in tears”
“Voluntary”- involuntary migration
Those who left – Those who stayed
Fear-worry: “Always a fear, an uneasiness…”
Power is everywhere: “We have concrete fears inside …”
Inability to return: “What if something had happened to that heaven?”
Settling in Athens: “They never liked us, not at all” – “Mythos”
A “new” place, a “new” life: “We are lost in the crowd…”
Friendship, neighbors: “I would not trade them for anyone, no one…”
To be a friend: “I thought that I could not become friends with a Turkish child”
Staying friends: “He/she is Romioi; he/she is Romioi too…”
Sanctification: “We are from here, we have been here for thousands of years”
Cemeteries: “A meeting place in Istanbul, a foreign concept in Athens”
Familiar-foreign – guest-native
Individual, collective, cultural memory
The beautiful years of my childhood – a bitter pain
Details
- Pages
- 264
- Publication Year
- 2020
- ISBN (PDF)
- 9783631841303
- ISBN (ePUB)
- 9783631841310
- ISBN (MOBI)
- 9783631841327
- ISBN (Softcover)
- 9783631832981
- DOI
- 10.3726/b17823
- Open Access
- CC-BY
- Language
- English
- Publication date
- 2020 (December)
- Published
- Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2020. 264 pp., 1 fig. b/w, 3 tables.
- Product Safety
- Peter Lang Group AG