Ottoman History Podcast - The Circassian Diaspora

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

with Şölen Şanlı Vasquez hosted by Brittany White | Over the course its final decades, millions of Muslim immigrants, many of them refugees of war and Russian conquest, settled in the Ottoman Empire. Between a quarter and a third of people in Turkey today have ancestors who arrived with those migrations. Yet their history often stops short of capturing the personal experiences of such people, what was erased, and what they have sought to preserve. In this episode, we speak with sociologist Şölen Şanlı Vasquez about how to write a more empathetic history of migration in Turkey through the lens of the Circassian diaspora. For her, this history is not just the story of how people from the North Caucasus were expelled from one empire and settled in an another. It is also a personal story about continuity, rupture, and recovery within the families of immigrants across generations and continents. Through a conversation about her ongoing research project called "The Home Within," we explore the themes of family, gender, ethnicity, race, and erasure --- not only in Turkey --- but across contexts of migration and displacement in the US and elsewhere. And we also reflect on the importance of public history that makes these issues relevant and relatable to a wider audience. « Click for More »

This is the Ottoman History Podcast, and I'm Brittany White. I recently spoke with Sholen Şanlıvazgaz, a sociologist by training, who is embarking on a new project concerning the history and memory of migration in the former Ottoman Empire. Through the vantage point of Turkey's Circassian diaspora, which was born out of the mass exodus of Muslims from the Russian Empire from the mid-19th century onward, she touches on themes of family, gender, ethnicity, race, and erasure, not only in Turkey, but across contexts of migration and displacement in the U.S. and elsewhere.

context of migration and displacement in the U.S. and elsewhere. At the center of this project, called The Home Within, is an exploration of her own family's history and experience of migration in Turkey. So I am a sociologist by training. I got my Ph.D. from the New School for Social Research in 2009. And before that, I have a master's from the London School of Economics. And I have been teaching at the Santa Rosa Junior College since 2012. And I teach mostly courses in sociology, lower division, race and ethnic relations is one course I teach regularly. I also teach introduction to sociology, social problems,

and close relationships and family life. Those are my typical courses that I teach in a typical semester. So I'll just jump right into the first question. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about who the Circassian or Adige people are? Sure. So Circassian or Cherkes is an umbrella term used in Turkey to refer to the Adige people. So in their native language, they would call themselves Adige. And they are the peoples of the Northwestern Caucasus, basically. There are 12 Adige tribes, and in Turkey, the peoples of north-central Caucasus, like the Ossetians, Ingush, and Chechens, are also

often considered Circassian. I am from the Ubuk tribe of all the 12 tribes. My family is of the Ubu tribe. According to CAFET, which is the Federation of Caucasian Associations, there are about 6 million Circassians that live in Turkey today. If this estimate is correct, they constitute about maybe 7% of Turkey's population. But as you know, Turkey doesn't ask the ethnic background question in its census, so we can't be exactly sure. They're a Muslim population, probably converted to Islam in the 16th century. So they're kind of later converts to Islam. Their language is Adige or Adigabze.

It's estimated that about 300,000 people speak it in the world today. And UNESCO designates Adyge as a language in danger. Probably half of those speakers live in Russia, and the rest probably live in Turkey. As I said, my ancestors are of the Ubuk tribe, and Ubuk was their tribe's native language. But in the 19th century, in Caucasia, when the Adyge people decided to unite against the Russian aggressors, the elders decided to adopt Adygovze as their unifying language. So as far as we know, Ubuk is now a dead language. It's become extinct. They think that the last person who spoke it died in 1992.

And it's a horse breeding culture. Cabarda horses are quite famous worldwide. It has a strong culinary tradition. As you may know, dishes like charques tavus, Caucasian chicken. It's very delicious. I love it. And my grandmother makes, you know, used to make it kind of the authentic way, as she called it. And the way she did it was she strained the walnuts through a strainer, like a thin strainer.

And that's how she said it's supposed to be made versus the way I make it sometimes, which is with olive oil. She would not like that. But her way was very time-consuming and very labor-intensive, so I don't do it that way anymore. They have this amazing tradition, or I should say kind of a worldview or philosophy called Habze, this all-encompassing, amazing cultural system. For example, it allows for co-ed kind of intermixing, so mixing between unmarried and unrelated men and women,

which in Islam, among traditional or conservative circles, as you know, this is kind of forbidden, right? There's haremlik and selamlik. So the Circassian people allow for like co-ed dances, co-ed entertainment. They get together in weddings and young unmarried men and women, young girls and boys may talk and even play together and date and things like that. The boy can come and pick up a girl from her home and take her to the wedding. So is this like a behavioral code or a set of more abstract beliefs? It's both an ethical code, but also a, you know, a code that kind of defines how

one should live. And so it's a little bit of both. I think it's a great segue into my next question about the Circassian diaspora. And Turkey's Circassian diaspora is the product of what's often referred to as the Bukes or Gun or the Great Circassian Exile. What were the causes of that expulsion? And what was the experience like for those Circassian families who were caught up in that process? I'm not a historian by training, and I did not do my own archival research. So I'm going to draw on Vladimir Hamid Troiansky's work quite a bit here, just to give him due credit. He's been a wonderful colleague and friend as I was working on this project. The major goal in the expulsion was really demographic engineering. The Russians wanted to get rid of a hostile or not desirable ethnic group.

And they wanted to replace them, this, you know, Muslim, Circassian groups with Christian Slavs. So they wanted to kind of engineer their territories. For the Ottomans, it served the purpose of Turkification of Anatolia. They settled Circassians, a Muslim refugee group, in areas of high religious diversity or a challenging population. So they wanted to make sure there was this balance of power. They also wanted a cheap kind of labor source in an empire that was in decline and that needed laborers and cheap laborers and laborers that were kind of loyal to them and kind of more docile.

So Vladimir makes a big claim here. He says that this set a precedent, really, for some of the mass displacements or atrocities that came after, such as the 1915 Armenian Genocide and the 1923 Greek-Turkish Population Exchange. The beginning of it, if you want to look at the history a little bit, it starts with the Treaty of Kuchukainaja of 1774. Russia took control of north-central Caucasus from the Ottoman Empire. Then in 1828, Russia annexes Crimea and takes control of the southern Caucasus. And then it turns its attention to Northern Caucasus. So between 1817 and 1864, they fight this Caucasus War against what then became the Caucasus Imamate. So the Circassian tribes kind of united under the Caucasus Imamate and fought Russia for

their lands. In 1859, the Circassians lost and the last imam, Sheikh Shamil, surrendered to Russia. So then they directed their attacks on coastal Caucasus, where my ancestors lived specifically. Coastal Caucasus was geopolitically important for Russia for the consolidation of its control over central and southern Caucasus, but also to control the northern part of the Black Sea. The area was also fertile and held economic and agricultural potential. In 1864, Russia claimed victory over northwest Caucasus, and the mass scale. So the Circassian communities

were evicted from their villages, and the only alternatives offered to them were not desirable. It involved either settling in coastal malarial swamps or, you know, living near Cossack settlements, you know, who were their enemies. So they flocked to the Black Sea coast and they waited for boats to take them to the Ottoman Empire. Russia paid for the private shipping companies to take them to the Ottoman ports. Some of the ports they were taken to were either in the Southern Black Sea or western Black Sea. So Trabzon, Ordu, Samsun, Istanbul, Kostance, Constanta, and Varna were the major port cities they were taken to. And, you know, they waited for the boats to arrive.

The winter conditions were harsh. They didn't have a lot of food. There was an outbreak of typhus. So many of them died, and many of them died on board the boats, and some of them died as they arrived in the Ottoman side, because the Ottomans were not really exactly prepared for them either, for such a big influx of people in such a short period of time. Vladimir estimates that probably 80 to 90% of the Western Circassians left Russia during the major 1863-1864 period, and probably up to a quarter of them died before

they reached their new homes in the Ottoman Empire. So quite terrible conditions, violent, and, you know, many of them lost their lives. So when we talk about genocide, was it a genocide or not? Well, yes. I mean, ethnic cleansing is probably a good concept as well to use here, but we can definitely talk about genocide as well. And the Ottomans gave them some provisions. They promised them free plots of land, exemption from military service for 25 years, exemptions from taxes for six years in the Balkans, 12 years in Anatolia, one-time grant of cattle, farming tools, grain, and temporary financial aid. However, of course, these exemptions and benefits were conditional

if the Muhajirs stayed long enough and tilled the land that they were given. I want to go back to where you said that 80 to 90% of Circassians left the Russian Empire at this time, and many died because of the conditions at sea. And I think it's interesting that you know on your website that even to today, some Circassian families don't eat seafood because it would be like eating the flesh of their ancestors. Yes, I mean, this is something anecdotal.

I've heard, you know, I think I heard it from my mom initially, and then I heard from other people as well. So yes, it's just this, you know, kind of lore that Circassians don't eat fish. I've certainly seen my family eat fish. So I'm not sure to what extent it's correct. But yeah, that's true. Could you talk a little bit about why this exile is not often included in histories of genocides? sides? Yeah, I've received that question before when I presented this work at a conference at Stanford, for example, and I answered it, but then I wasn't sure. So I checked with Vladimir on this as well, Vladimir Hamid Troiansky, and he told me some other things as well. So the big reason is

probably the diaspora in Turkey, the Circassian diaspora, couldn't really bring it up as well it could have or should have internationally. They only became vocal about it in the 1990s. As you know, Turkey's relationship with civil rights organizations has its ups and downs and follows military coups and European Union negotiations and things like that. While Circassians organized around their ethnic identity kind of very early on after they arrived in the Ottoman Empire, they really only started becoming more politically vocal in the 1990s. So I think it's newly being talked about relatively speaking

and there's definitely an awareness raising consciousness raising attempt that's coming up but it's not at the level of you know international consciousness yet hopefully my study is a contribution to that attempt an an awareness-raising attempt. Although that's not my primary goal, I hope to bring this genocide to the awareness of the international community as well. The second reason is the Russian Federation pushes back against the idea of the Circassian genocide being recognized internationally. It was discouraged during the Soviet era as well. Western scholars didn't have access to the Soviet archives during the Cold War.

So it kind of became this thing that nobody could really study very well. And not to mention Ottoman archives were also somewhat inaccessible up until recently. So from both sides, you know, they couldn't really get to the archives. In the 80s and 90s, I believe in Russia, there was this opening, you know, with Perestroika and Glasnost where, you know, some Russian scholars started studying it. But then with the current Russian government, the Russian Federation just pushes back against it so much that it's really difficult to talk about it. During the Sochi Olympics in 2014,

I think the world kind of became aware of it to a certain extent, but then that didn't really become much either. And finally, there seems to be this the way Western scholarship is arranged in the history of in the in history departments. People study Russian or Eastern European region or Middle East. So, you know, kind of the Caucasus falls through the cracks. And where does your personal and family story fit in all this? So as I said, my family is of the Ubuk tribe. They're from the coastal areas of northwestern Caucasus,

near actually the Russian town of Sochi today. So they probably came from somewhere around Sochi. My grandmother, so my mother's side, my maternal side is Circassian, only not my father's side. Let me clarify that. My grandmother's father, his name was Hamde Ahmet, and her mother's name is Nesibe. According to family lore, Hamde Ah Ahmed comes from Caucasia with 40 slaves and sells them to the Ottoman palace.

So this is how the story is told, you know, in the family. And there's, you know, there's slavery in Circassian culture. And it's, you know, highly debated today, of course, whether we should talk about it or boast about it. You know, obviously, it's it or boast about it you know obviously it's not something to be you know proud of um but you know sometimes you still hear statements like you know and so and so was um so and so had slaves and you know so it's part of family stories but he owned a village of 40 homes apparently again that's what's passed down in my family from generation to generation. I think he comes, he migrates kind of in the later periods,

in the 1890s or maybe even early 1900s. I still need to interview some family members and get to the bottom of when he might have come exactly to the Ottoman Empire. So I'm not sure, but he comes later. He migrates a little bit later. He initially marries this Egyptian woman who was also a noble woman. So again, that's part of family lore. But the woman ends up going back to Egypt. So he comes to Düzce, you know, an area with a large Circassian population, with his horse and his saz, his plucked string instrument, and marries Nesibe, who was a widowed woman with six children. So the marriage was arranged by the village eldermen, the tamates, as they're called in Habze and in Circassian.

Nesibe was well off as well. They had two more children, Javidan and Müzeyyan, my grandmother. So my grandmother was the youngest of eight. So the really interesting thing about Hamde Ahmet is he's also one of the 150 people who were denaturalized and deported after the signing of the Lausanne Treaty in 1923. So Lausanne has an annex, Annex 8. It's called Declaration of Amnesty, and it grants immunity to the perpetrators of any crimes connected to political events committed between 1914 and 1922. Basically, the purpose of this annex is to say it is to exempt Ottoman officials from persecution of for war crimes, notably the Armenian genocide and other atrocities committed during the war and after 1914 and 1922. Then the Turkish government requests an exception to these exemptions. So basically it says, well, we're not going to punish anybody for war crimes.

However, we've identified 150 people who we are going to just denaturalize and deport. So my great-grandfather is one of those 150 men. Number 73 in the documents under participant and voice to the Circassian Convention. So the Circassian Convention, Çerkez Kongresi, met in Izmir in 1921 and declared, among other things, you know, their kind of displeasement with the new Ankara government. So they say things like, and I'm drawing on Hakan Özoglu's work here, they've seen the Kemalists' inhuman actions

and wrongful policies and therefore wish to live under the civilized Greek government in peace. Wow, those are fighting words. Exactly. They say things like, they accuse the Committee of Union Progress of autocratic Turkification policies and blame them for the Circassian population's numerical stagnation. They say our population should have reached 6 million,

there's only about 2 million of us. So you are to blame. You have kind of suppressed our numbers. Clearly, they're not friendly to the new government. However, it's still a mystery to me why these individuals were singled out as the worst of the worst. You know, when you look at the list, there's members of the Ottoman court, there's journalists, there's people like Çerkez Etem, who's probably Etem the Circassian, right, who's probably one of the most notorious Circassians in the history of, you know, the Turkish Republic and Ottoman history. People like Refik Halit Karay are on the list. And then there's my great-grandfather who's participated in this convention not even i don't think he's even a signatory so you know it's it's a bit of a mystery

something that i would really like to dig a little bit deeper into my mom always said it my grandfather was you know use a lily clare dan he's one of the 150 years. And I honestly didn't know what it meant up until maybe later in my life. I kind of understood what that was. And then when I started this research, I actually Googled him one day. I put in, I think, Hamdi Ahmed. I'm not sure which spelling I used because I'm not sure how his name is spelled exactly and then he his name popped up on Wikipedia so I was it was an emotional moment I have to say because I I thought about him in the sense of you know oh my god my grandmother never knew her father because she didn't remember him.

I think when he was exiled, she was probably two or three years old. And it's possible that even before he was exiled, he was not around much. They actually declared an amnesty in 1938 and have forgiven the 150 years. But he never returned. So we believe that he died in Greece. Not much is known about him, honestly. There's no picture of him that I was able to find. Yeah, we don't know what happened to him exactly or what he was thinking or who he was and all of that. Can you say a little bit more about how families like your family, Circassian families,

were encouraged and in many cases forced by law to assimilate into Ottoman and then later Turkish life? Turkey only recognizes non-Muslim minorities as minorities. So these are Jews, Armenians, the Rum, etc. They are official minorities. They're given some rights, such as education and mother tongue, some religious freedoms. But in practice, currently, they have very limited rights. Also, they're up against many bureaucratic barriers. Their numbers are diminishing, especially under the current government. So even the non-Muslim minorities are not necessarily, their rights are not necessarily respected. one of the first co-ed schools in the Ottoman Empire. It's called the Çerkez Kız Numune Mektebi,

where they teach Turkish and Adige, so it's a bilingual school. And they organize around organizations like the Circassian Solidarity Association, Çerkez Teavun Cemiyeti. They publish bilingual magazines and newspapers like Guaze, Indiyane. But all of these activities are banned after 1923. The Turkish constitution bans instruction in languages other than Turkish, and this creates a tremendous barrier to the transmission of culture to the next generations. So since the early 2000s, so they've changed this with Turkish, Turkey's attempts at, you know, joining the European Union. They've had this reopening and they now allow ethnic minorities to learn their languages in privately run courses in cultural centers.

But, you know, I've been reading about how many communities feel, first of all, we need to pay money to learn our mother tongue, and they're not happy about that. And, you know, and many of them don't have the funds to pay for something like this. And also the organizations and the cultural centers are, you know, experiencing lots of bureaucratic barriers to arranging these courses, funding them, finding the right people to teach them, etc. The ban in broadcasting in languages other than Turkish has been lifted recently as well. And there are some Kurdish TV channels now.

But as far as I know, no Circassian. As far as I know, there aren't any Circassian TV channels broadcasting from Turkey. I believe there's one broadcasting from Jordan. You know, as you know, being an ethnic minority in Turkey is a difficult position. And as I think each group is organizing around their own identity, Kurdish, Circassian laws, etc. I don't know if they're coming together, but that would be not a bad idea. On your website, though, you mentioned this really interesting anecdote about how you have a friendship with somebody who happens to be Armenian,

but you don't find out that they're Armenian until about two decades into the friendship. And so in thinking about that, what are the differences between the experiences of those of Circassian descent and the experiences of those of other ethnic minorities in Turkey. Growing up in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s, I just don't remember us talking about our ethnic identities much. It just wasn't a comfortable topic to talk about. I do remember mentioning that I was Circassian to people multiple times. And, you know, I don't remember receiving any negative reactions from it. I don't remember my Kurdish friends, you know, who I later learned were Kurdish or Armenian,

talking about their respective identities in the same way. They certainly wouldn't boast about it. And they also didn't even mention it. So I think it was, you know, putting two and two together, you know, looking at their maybe unusual names of their parents. You know, I remember my Armenian friend, they celebrated, you know, I mean, we all kind of celebrated New Year's as if it was Christmas, you know, in ways in which Christmas is celebrated, I think, in the Western world, you know, complete with presents and the tree, etc. But they kind of celebrated it a little more, I would say, maybe enthusiastically. So, you know, you get kind of these little signs and signals, but, you know,

you don't ask your friend, hey, are you guys Armenian? Or, I mean, we didn't, I don't even think we had the vocabulary back then. But I certainly grew up around Armenians. And I also had Jewish friends. And one of the things that also really struck me about many of them was, for example, they had their Jewish names or Hebrew names, and they had also had Turkish names always. So on their official IDs, it said a different name. And I remember being really surprised, you know, that's not your name. Why does that say on your ID? And they would explain... The name on the ID was a Turkish name? Yeah, it would be a Turkish

name. Whereas my friend's name was a more Jewish name or Hebrew name. To shout out to my friend Terry, for example, her name was Terry. We called her Terry. Her ID said Tuilin. So that kind of, you know, Turkification of the name in a way. I remember for the boys, for the men, military service was always a big source of discomfort and, you know, fear, you know, what's going to happen when I go there and when they realize I'm not, you know, I'm not Muslim. So they, you know, they had those kinds of challenges. For the Muslim minorities, ethnic minorities, I think Kurds probably are in a much more precarious situation more kind of likely to be able to say they're Circassians more naturally and, you know, with some pride. This is kind of a big question, but how does Circassian identity help us think about Turkishness? And really, what constitutes

race in Turkey? You know, I mean, Turkish is this, you know, umbrella identity, right? Everybody's supposed to identify or say they're Turkish. The famous quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, it's not, how happy is the one who's Turkish, but how happy is the one who says they're Turkish. I actually find significance in that because Ayhan Kaya, a sociologist from Bilgi University, he probably did one of the more large-scale surveys on Circassians. And many of them do say, you know, I'm Turkish, but also I'm Circassian. So those two identities kind of go together. But Turkish is, of course, the meta, you know, identity that kind of encompasses all the other identities. So, I mean, we're all supposed to say we're Turkish.

But in the case of Circassians, their subculture is also kind of visible and acceptable to a certain extent. For the Kurds, I don't know if we can say the same thing. They're kind of in a separate category. And I can also say, you know, I reached out to a friend who studies the Kurdish community in Turkey and asked her, do you know of any studies that kind of compare Kurds and Circassians in Turkey? And she said, the only thing I can tell you, I don't know of any studies, but the only thing I can tell you is it's kind of this sense that Circassians are a model minority in Turkey, whereas Kurds are like the black sheep, right? I actually think of it, think it's a very good metaphor. When they come from Russia, and they're trying to integrate into the Ottoman society,

many of them really, I mean, look to how can we become upwardly mobile? How can we make this in society? Many of them join the the military they have careers in the military if you look at the founding fathers of turkey many of them are circassian ralph orbai is a good example and um so they're they've they try to integrate and they try to be kind of like good ottoman citizens right yes they try to retain their culture, and they, you know, have their cultural centers, and they try to pass on the traditions, the habs, the language. But I think with the exception of maybe Etem, Çerkez Etem, there are a few figures that rebel or are of a rebellious nature. Kurds have a very different relationship with both the Ottoman Empire, but also

with the modern Turkish Republic. And I think the model minority myth kind of fits, because it allows the Turkish government to say, hey, look at Circassians, you know, they may be minorities as well, but they're behaving, right? They're not getting their rights either, you know, they may be minorities as well, but they're behaving, right? They're not getting their rights either, you know, to education and mother tongue, but we don't see them making so much noise about it or so much trouble. Whereas, you know, what's up with you? Why can't you behave as well? So just like in the US, you know, Asians are the model minority, and it's a way of saying to black Americans, you know, here, there model minority. And it's a way of saying to black Americans, you know, here, there's another ethnic minority group or racial minority group that also suffered from discrimination and racism, and they're making it an American society. So why can't you

make it too, right? Completely kind of overlooking and denying all of the racism and discrimination, all the structural, institutional racism, discrimination, as well as individual racism and discrimination they suffered from for decades, centuries. So yeah, maybe I'll leave it at that. moving on to how you approach this project you're not a historian you're you're a sociologist by training and you have a number of published academic works most notably your 2014 monograph women in cultural citizenship in turkey so why did you choose a public digital platform as your academic works, most notably your 2014 monograph, Women and Cultural Citizenship in Turkey. So why did you choose a public digital platform as your medium for telling these stories and wading into the research for this particular project? Yeah, honestly, the first reason was the pandemic.

The original goal was to travel to Turkey. I was on sabbatical last year, so I was supposed to go to Turkey, start an oral history project initially with my family members in Düzce, and then hopefully snowball that into other predominantly Circassian areas, etc. So when it became clear that I could not travel, I wanted to find a platform to at least share the first results of my preliminary research. Initially, I thought I could still conduct oral history over Zoom, which didn't prove to be possible. But I was able to interview some of my family members, some other scholars. But around the same time, I also came across digital history

as a methodology, as a way to share research. And that really changed my whole world. What I'm doing definitely does not replace the rigorous process of academic research and publishing. But we also know the limitations of sometimes academic publishing, how long it takes. But, you know, my work still draws on traditionally conducted archival historical sociological research. I just wanted to display my initial findings in a publicly accessible way and start the conversation.

I want to highlight the power of digital history as a method and as a teaching tool. I've been teaching at a community college for nine years now. And sometimes it's difficult to get my students to read an academic paper and relate to it and connect with it and get a lot out of it. So it's a way of using digital technologies to kind of tell a personal story, but also connected to kind of the socio-historical context of the time. So Circassians are little known in the US. And, you know, you may not necessarily be curious about, you know, why would I learn about Circassians in the US, you may think. But hopefully, when you do a project like mine, where, you know, you tell a personal story, and here's my the picture of my grandmother. And here's, you know, the story about his father, her father that she never met. Hopefully, you

draw people in a little bit more. And then hopefully, it gets them thinking about, you know, the greater socio-historical context, but also their own lives and their own families and their own migration histories. So I also use it as a, hopefully a way to kind of get them excited to their own research into their own family histories and find ways to connect it to what greater things were going on in the world at the time. You know, if they came from Mexico, you know, why? You know, what historical processes made them leave their home countries and come to the U.S.? If they came from Italy in early 1900s, right? That's a whole nother set of historical events that prompted that move,

possibly. And then what did they experience in this country? Right? So it's a way to hopefully draw students in. It's a way to make it make research historical research more accessible to a lay community to, you know, just regular people who may not otherwise be interested in that topic. I really like that on your website, you make a point of connecting the expulsion of Circassians to other forced migrations across time and geography. So can you tell us why you thought it was important to draw out the connections between this and say something like the Great Migration or Bracero guest workers from Mexico or this concept of climate refugees? I mean, the Great Migration is often considered as labor migration, right?

People, you know, black Americans were moving from the South during the Jim Crow era to look for jobs in the North, in the industrial North. But it wasn't just about that right it was about um of course discrimination terrible racism segregation and um you know lynchings uh violent uh violence right that was directed against them um no voting rights right civil rights were definitely um absolutely missing and um so yeah i there's's definitely connections, a lot of connections between all these various events of forced displacement. And kind of early on in the project, I also make a distinction between, or I make a point that the distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration is kind of a false distinction, right?

Because people leave for various reasons. Nobody just kind of picks up and, you know, some people do, right? For fun, you can leave and explore other countries. But the process of migration or forced displacement usually is wrought with lots of pain and homesickness and again the discrimination that you experience in the host country. So it's not easy. And finally you talk about effective turn and giving yourself the permission to move away from the traditional stone cold objectivity of some methodological approaches. What has this done? What has this turn done for your work? And why does the history of Circassians in Turkey need more emotion? First of all, I approached this project as a migrant myself. So while I have not personally

experienced the Circassian exile from the Caucasus, I have, you know, moved from Turkey to the US, initially to the UK, and then the US for my education. I want to absolutely say that those two do not compare, right? My experience of migration is not the same as what my ancestors experienced, of course. I've chosen to leave Turkey. I already spoke the language when I began living in these countries. I had a support system. I was highly educated and I was documented, right? But despite all of my privileges, I also still suffer from homesickness. I still don't feel quite at home in the US, nor in Turkey anymore. So it's like this I belong nowhere kind of feeling. And I have a home within. So that's why the project is called Home Within. I believe all migrants carry this home within themselves, the home that they either miss and want to go back to,

or the home that they've never had. That's why I even talk about foster children, children who have been abused in their homes, but they may still have a home within that's a safe place that they want to live in with people who love them and don't hurt them, etc. with people who love them and don't hurt them, etc. So for me, this is already a difficult topic to approach with stone-cold objectivity. The second reason has to do with my teaching over the many years of my community college teaching as well as teaching other places, four-year institutions.

I've been teaching sociology, topics in sociology like child poverty, homelessness, racism, sexual assault, violence against women, really terrible, heart-wrenching topics. And I teach them with the stone cold objectivity that we've been taught in our academic institutions that we've graduated from, right? And oftentimes my students approach me and say, I'm really either triggered, if you want to use that word, by what you just talked about, but they really have a reaction, an emotional reaction to the topics that I teach. And part of it is because I happen to teach a student body that experiences a lot of those things right some of them have experienced homelessness or do in that moment experience

homelessness many of them experience racism many experience sexual assault so it's it's hard for them to hear being taught with such stone- objectivity. So I've kind of learned to appreciate that and understand that, you know, we need a little more empathy as we teach these courses and we talk about these topics. It's a way of hopefully getting rid of that wedge between the expert, the kind of all knowing, you know, who doesn't feel anything, right, but who understands these topics, and those who suffer from the ill that you're describing or analyzing. So the human doesn't get lost in all of this. Hopefully, this case will help build some empathy with the Syrians that are currently living in Turkey

and experiencing, you know, terrible racism and discrimination. You know, of course, there has been a recent influx of Afghans, people from Afghanistan arriving in Turkey, and they're being received not with, you know, open arms, to say the least, by, you know, the general public in Turkey. And there's this incredibly poisonous rhetoric against these people. So we I just mentioned, I think, both of my ancestors, right, both of my sides arrived from somewhere, right, in what's today Turkey. arrived from somewhere, right, in what's today Turkey. My father's side is from the Balkans. And it's estimated that somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30% of Turkey traced their origins to Muhajirs. So hopefully projects like this build some empathy, you know, so that we remember we all came from somewhere. Maybe not all of us, but,

you know, many of us did. And we experienced discrimination and racism. We experienced difficulties. We had to build our own communities and make it. So let's maybe give these new migrants and displaced people in our community in Turkey a chance and treat them with respect and advocate for human rights for them, rights to send their kids to school and, you know, have a decent life and have a livelihood. I also think the U.S. needs to hear this as well, you know, kind of a story told through the Circassian exile, but also talks about slavery and also talks about, you know, the Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery as it was, you know, practiced in the U.S. for centuries. I hope this is a reminder for everybody that we

need a little more empathy. We need a little more compassion for people who are leaving their homes. And we just are kind of leaving the Trump era and start the healing process. But of course, this precedes Trump, right? Racism is so deeply embedded in the DNA of the US. So, and I think decolonizing our thinking, decolonizing our teaching,

decolonizing our curricula, it's so important. And that's why I cite work like Edward E. Baptist, The Health Has Never Been Told, or Adam Hochschild's work on decolonizing museums, because, you know, this is a story that also the U.S. has to hear. And so hopefully with the English language, they'll get access to it as well.

And hopefully they'll be drawn into it. And my personal story will be an in for them to kind of be interested and also think about what's going on in their own country. Thank you for listening to our interview with Sholene Shanley-Vasquez. To learn more about her project called The Home Within, visit our website, ottomanhistorypodcast.com, where you'll find a number of episodes

related to this conversation. I'm Brittany White. That's it for now. Until next time, take care.