Turkifying Poverty, or: the Phantom Pain of Izmir’s Lost Christian Working Class, 1924–26

Abstract

This article shows that ‘Turkification’, a term widely used by historians of modern Turkey to refer to the forced transfer of property from Christian into Muslim hands, ought to be conceptualized not only in the sense of ‘enrichment’ but also, with regard to the working classes, as a process in which Muslim people inherited the poverty of their Christian predecessors. Taking İzmir as a case in point, the article first describes the plight of the overwhelmingly Christian working class prior to 1922. It then studies reports and editorials that discussed the economic and social situation in İzmir in the years 1923 to 1926, after the Turkish victory and forced migration of her Christian population. Over the course of these years, İzmir experienced a serious economic crisis, and bread prices reached levels that led to widespread undernourishment and hunger among the cityʼs poor. Agricultural production was lagging behind pre-war levels, and positive effects of ‘Turkificationʼ policies were failing to materialize. By analyzing the contemporary journalistsʼ attempts at explaining the crisis, but also pointing out national and transnational factors that they were probably unaware of, the article makes an original contribution to the economic and social history of early republican Turkey.

Keywords:

• Turkey 1922–1938
• early republican Turkey
• İzmir
• Smyrna
• labor history
• Turkification
• poverty
• urban poor
• bread prices
• urban history

Acknowledgments

An early draft of this article was presented at the conference ‘İzmir and the Region: Hundred Years of Social, Economic and Cultural Change’ organized by Hrant Dink Vakfı in Izmir in 2017. I am indebted to Yektan Türkyılmaz (Forum Transnationale Studien, Berlin) for his encouragement and advice in preparing that presentation in Turkish. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their feedback, and Helen Kedourie for her meticulous corrections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 From 1908 onward, boycott movements used the term milli iktisat to refer to the promotion of more Ottomans, and from 1911 onward, of Muslims, in the Ottoman economy. Y. D. Çetinkaya, The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement: Nationalism, Protest and the Working Classes in the Formation of Modern Turkey, Library of Ottoman Studies 41 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014); Zafer Toprak, Türkiye'de Millî İktisat 1908–1918 [The National Economy in Turkey, 1908–1918] (Ankara: Yurt Yayıncılık, 1982). Türkleştirme on the other hand, was first used in the sense of cultural assimilation by Tekin Alp: Tekin Alp, Türkleşdirme (Istanbul: Resimli Ay, 1928). The first one to use the term in the sense of economic Turkification appears to have been Ayhan Aktar in his seminal book on the notorious Varlık Vergisi, a special tax that especially targeted Jews in the 1940s. See Ayhan Aktar, Varlık Vergisi ve "Türkleştirme" Politikaları [The Wealth Tax and the Politics of Turkification] (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2000). Though his book deals with the republican period, other authors such as Mehmet Polatel and Uğur Ümit Üngör have retroactively used the term ‘Turkification’ also for the period of the First World War. This is problematic because, at that point in history, many beneficiaries of this process can hardly be identified as Turkish at all. They often hailed from the Caucasus or the Balkans and spoke a variety of languages. Their one common characteristic was their Muslim faith. See Uğur Ü. Üngör and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London: Continuum, 2011).

2 Ayhan Aktar, Homogenising the Nation, Turkifying the Economy: The Turkish Experience of Population Exchange Reconsidered in Renée Hirschon (ed.), Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003), pp.79–95, at p. 81.

3 An important exception to that rule are two chapters in Murat Koraltürk’s book that study policies of the 1920s and 1930s aimed at giving menial jobs in the railroad companies and in the entertainment sector to Muslims. These policies targeted the non-Muslim population of Istanbul. Koraltürk does not study their aftermath. See Murat Koraltürk, Erken Cumhuriyet Döneminde Ekonominin Türkleştirilmesi [The Turkification of the Economy in the Early Republican Period] (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2011).

4 Modern Turkish distinguishes between ‘Romans’, i.e. Ottoman subjects of the Greek Orthodox faith (Rum) and Greek citizens (Yunan). In late Ottoman times, western Anatolia was home to significant numbers of both. It may well be (but would require further study) that the term ‘Yunan’ was commonly used only for privileged Greek citizens who were members of the middle or upper class, but not for working-class people from Greece. As I explain below, we know that the area was a major destination point for seasonal as well as permanent work migration from mainland Greece, other new Balkan states and the Aegean islands in late Ottoman times. This means that many, but certainly not all working-class Greek-Orthodox people in and around Izmir were technically Greek citizens. For working and living conditions of the working class, which are the main focus of this article, I do not think that citizenship was of any importance at all. We also do not know how many people changed citizenship in the decades preceding 1922. It is for this reason that I do not distinguish between Rum and Yunan people, referring to all of them as ‘Greeks’ instead. For a discussion of work migration to the area, see Omri Paz, ‘The Usual Suspect: Worker Migration and Law Enforcement in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Anatolia’, Continuity and Change Vol.30, No.2 (2015), pp.223–49.

5 The term is also conceptually fuzzy. I use it here for lack of a better term (‘Islamization’ clearly refers to a change of religion, not of ownership) and because it is well-established. That said, the people who formed the new Muslim working class of Izmir were certainly ethnically diverse: Western Anatolia, where most of them came from in 1922, had been a major settlement area for Muslim Balkan War refugees during the Young Turk period, while Circassians had been settled there even earlier.

6 By ‘working class’ I mean people who had no control over the means of production and therefore had to sell their labor, regardless of the technologies used or the amount of capital involved. This definition includes both urban and rural people who worked as wage-laborers or artisans and also covers sharecroppers. This conceptualization is taken from Çetinkaya, The Young Turks and the Boycott Movement, p.34.

7 Works that have studied exchangee settlement have generally not done so from the perspective of labor history, but they clearly show that these three areas were major destinations for exchangees: Nedim İpek, Mübadele ve Samsun [The Exchange and Samsun] (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 2000); Tülay Alim Baran, Bir Kentin Yeniden Yapılanması: Izmir, 1923-1938 [The Re-Making of a City: Izmir 1923–1938] (Istanbul: Arma, 2003); Onur Yıldırım, Diplomacy and Displacement: Reconsidering the Turco-Greek Exchange of Populations, 1922–1934 (New York: Routledge, 2006); Ellinor Morack, The Dowry of the State? The Politics of Abandoned Property and Nation-Building in Turkey, 1921–1945 (Bamberg: Bamberg University Press, 2017).

8 Devlet İstatistik Enstitüsü 1973, p.143, cited in Rıfat N. Bali, Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Türkiye Yahudileri. Bir Türkleştirme Serüveni: (1923–1945) [The Jews of Turkey during the Years of the Republic. A Tale of Turkification] (İstanbul: İletişim, 2005), p.197.

9 Çağlar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (London: Verso, 1987), p.21.

10 Ibid.

11 Reşat Kasaba, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy: The Nineteenth Century (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988), p.100.

12 Ibid., p.193.

13 Celal Bayar, Ben de Yazdım. Milli Mücadeleye Giriş [I, too wrote: Introduction to the National Struggle]: vol. 5 (Istanbul: Baha, 1967), p.1554.

14 On the employment of women in the Ottoman tobacco industry, see Robert C. Goodman, ‘The Role of the Tobacco Trade in Turkish-American Relations, 1923–29’ (MA thesis, University of Richmond, 1988), p.iii. https://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses/540/.

15 Kasaba, Ottoman Empire, pp.99–100.

16 Charles Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey 1800–1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p.37.

17 Rıfat Bali, A Survey of Some Social Conditions in Smyrna, Asia Minor, May 1921 (Istanbul: Libra, 2009), p.9. On the history of the International College, see also http://www.levantineheritage.com/college.htm

18 Mr. Stearns, Industrial Conditions in Rıfat Bali (ed.), A Survey of Some Social Conditions in Smyrna, Asia Minor, May 1921 (Istanbul: Libra, 2009), pp.35–50, at p.36.

19 Ibid., pp.41–2.

20 There is anecdotal evidence that the Greek servants of foreign families were allowed to stay in 1922: Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), p.223.

21 Mr. Stearns, ‘Industrial Conditions’, pp.39–40.

22 Ibid., p.37.

23 Ibid., p.45.

24 Ibid., p.47.

25 Ibid., p.45.

26 Emmet W. Rankin, Health in Rıfat Bali (ed.), A Survey of Some Social Conditions in Smyrna, Asia Minor, May 1921 (Istanbul: Libra, 2009), pp.51–96, at p.53.

27 Ibid., p.59.

28 Ibid., p.56. The statistics for Jews and Armenians appear to be incomplete (for instance, they do not list any cancer deaths). They were probably obtained from their respective religious communities, which may have only had (or provided) insufficient data.

29 Ibid.

30 Miss A.E. Pinneo, Charities in Rıfat Bali (ed.), A Survey of Some Social Conditions in Smyrna, Asia Minor, May 1921 (Istanbul: Libra, 2009), p.157.

31 Biray Kolluoğlu Kırlı, ‘Forgetting the Smyrna Fire’, History Workshop Journal Vol.60, No.1 (2005), pp.25–44, at p.31.

32 Estimates for the number of deaths range from as little as several thousand (Norman M. Naimark) to between 80,000 and 180,000 (Mansel). Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p.52 and Mansel, Levant, p.220. I think that Biray Kolluoğlu’s estimation of no less than 100,000 victims is more convincing. She has arrived at this number by calculating the reported number of Christian residents and refugees in the city against that of the survivors who were evacuated to Greece. Kolluoğlu Kırlı, ‘Forgetting’, p.31.

33 Ibid., p.219.

34 Michelle E. Tusan, Smyrna's Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

35 In October 1924, Ahenk estimated their number at 200,000 in the province and 20,000 in the city of Izmir. Kemal Arı, Büyük mübadele: Türkiye'ye Zorunlu Göç, 1923-1925 [The Great Exchange: Forced Migration to Turkey, 1923–1925] (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1995, 2007), p.9.

36 For discussions surrounding legitimate vs. illegitimate squatting, see Kemal Arı, ‘Yunan İşgalinden sonra Izmir'de 'Emval-i Metruke' ve 'Fuzuli İşgal' Sorunu’ [The Problems of ‘Abandoned Property’ and ‘Squatting’ in Izmir after the Time of the Greek Occupation], Atatürk Araştırma Merkezi Dergisi Vol.5, No.18 (1989), pp.627–57; Ellinor Morack, Refugees, Locals, and ‘the’ State: Property Compensation in the Province of Izmir Following the Greco-Turkish Population Exchange of 1923 in Kent Schull, M. S. Saraçoğlu, and Robert Zens (eds.), Law and Legality in the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), pp.179–200.

37 See Morack, The Dowry of the State? The Politics of Abandoned Property and Nation-Building in Turkey, 1921–1945.

38 This is suggested by dozens of letters that German importers wrote to the German consul at Izmir in 1923, asking for contacts to dried fruit exporters there: ibid., p.194.

39 We know that there were many cases of arson already in the four days prior to the fire, and that the big fire had several starting points. See Biray Kolluoğlu Kırlı, ‘Forgetting the Smyrna Fire’, History Workshop Journal Vol.60, No.1 (2005), p.32.

40 While approximately 2000 refugees have found abodes among the ruins of the disaster (this quarter skirts the present inhabitable portions of the city), few cases however, are heard, concerning attacks in that section, as the other and better class Smyrna residents have no logical reason to visit that quarter, and if they did so, their own presence there could be cloaked with suspicion. Furthermore, armed guards are stationed throughout the entire devastated area at all times. (…) Public Security in Smyrna – Confidential Report by Frederick O. Bird, 23 March 1924. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD (NARA), Smyrna Consular Records, box 070.

41 Numbers taken from Erkan Serçe, 1923 Senesi Izmir Vilayeti İstatistiği [The 1923 Statistic of the Izmir Province] (Izmir: Izmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür Yayını, 2001), p.7.

42 Webster mentions both undercounting of girls and a relative parity of adult men and women in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir in the 1927 census. He explains that the latter was, by the 1930s, due to work migration ‘to İstanbul and Izmir for all kinds of employment (…)’. Donald E. Webster, The Turkey of Atatürk: Social Process in the Turkish Reformation (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1939), p.59. His map showing the rate of widowhood is in the public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1927-widowhood-Turkey.png

43 226,261 males and 225,188 females. Serçe, 1923 Senesi Izmir Vilayeti İstatistiği, vol. I, p.35.

44 For instance, the 1923 statistic does not provide overall mortality, only numbers for people who died of infectious diseases. On the other hand, suicides, which were not covered in 1921, are counted. See Serçe, 1923 Senesi Izmir Vilayeti İstatistiği, vol. II, pp.30–31.

45 Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development, p.93.

46 Ibid. He does not discuss grain prices, probably because this crop was no longer exported after 1922.

47 National Archives at Kew, London Foreign Office Records (FO) Report Greenway, 12 October 1926. FO 371/11360/C11563.

48 Levant Trade Review, 14:1, 1926, 16.

49 Economic and general conditions in Smyrna district, 27 February 1926, FO 371/11548/E 1897.

50 An American consular report estimated the illiteracy rate in Izmir, including women, at only 25–30 per cent in 1925. NARA Izmir consular records, box 025, Notes from Smyrna, Enclosure No 1, with letter to High Commission, dated 12 June 1925. This is remarkable given that the nationwide rate of literacy was found to be 7 per cent in 1927.

51 Mehmet Şevki, ‘İyi İş, İyi Para’ [Good Work, Good Money], in Ahenk, 3 July 1924.

52 The wages given in the official statistics of 1922–23 are considerably lower, suggesting a copying mistake: monthly teachers’ wages start at 650 kuruş (6.5 liras). See Serçe, 1923 Senesi Izmir Vilayeti İstatistiği, vol. I, pp.109–37. 6500 kuruş or 65 liras per month (about 2 lira per day) appear to be more likely.

53 Mehmet Şevki, ‘İyi İş, İyi Para’, in Ahenk, 3 July 1924.

54 Serçe, 1923 Senesi Izmir Vilayeti İstatistiği, vol. I, pp.232–33. Kuruş was the subunit of the Turkish Lira, with 100 kuruş = 1 Lira. 1 kuruş was further divided into 40 para.

55 ‘Ne Olurdu?’ [What should have happened?] in Ahenk, 2 May 1924.

56 ‘Ne Olacak?’ [What will happen?] in Ahenk, 13 August 1924.

57 Zeynel Besim, ‘Amele’ [Worker], in Hizmet, 22 February 1930, in Zeki Arıkan, Izmir Basınından Seçmeler (1923-1938) [Selected Pieces from the Izmir Press (1923–1938)]: II. Cilt I. Kitap (Izmir: Izmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2003), pp.445–46.

58 For a partial discussion of that debate, see Ayhan Aktar, ‘Homogenising the Nation, Turkifying the Economy: The Turkish Experience of Population Exchange Reconsidered’.

59 Ebru Boyar and Kate Fleet, A Social History of Ottoman Istanbul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp.158–59.

60 On the fixing of prices, see M. S. Kütükoğlu, Narkh in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Leiden: Brill, first published online 2012. Consulted online on 30 December 2018. doi: 10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_5801. For mid-19th century Istanbul, see Mevlüt Camgöz, Ekmek Buğday ve Şehir [Bread, Wheat and the City] (Istanbul: Kitabevi Yayınları, 2017).

61 Fatih Ermiş, A History of Ottoman Economic Thought: Developments before the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2014), p.171.

62 See Donald Quataert, ‘The Economic Climate of the “Young Turk Revolution” in 1908’, Journal of Modern History Vol.51, No.3 (1979), pp.1147–61.

63 Murat Koraltürk, ‘Milli İktisat, Ekonominin Türkleştirilmesi ve Izmir İktisat Kongresi’ [The National Economy, Turkification of the Economy, and the Izmir Economic Congress], Toplumsal Tarih Vol.16, No.182 (2009), pp.36–40.

64 Nadir Özbek, ‘Kemalist Rejim ve Popülizm Sınırları: Büyük Buhran ve Buğday Alım Politikaları’ [The Kemalist Regime and the Limits of Populism: The Great Depression and Wheat Purchasing Policies], Toplum ve Bilim Vol.27, No.96 (2003), pp.219–40.

65 Having been founded in May 1923, Türk Sesi (The Turkish Voice) appears to have been a hardcore nationalist, loudmouthed, and relatively short-lived paper. A piece published on the occasion of its first (and last) anniversary contains the self-description ‘jealously, but not excessively nationalist’. Zeki Arıkan, Izmir Basınından Seçmeler (1923–1938): II. Cilt II. Kitap (Izmir: Izmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2008), p.14. Agitation against the city’s Jewish population is more prominent here than in other papers of the time.

66 Belediye icraatında asabet ediyorsa halkın ekmek ihtiyacı temin için cezri bir surette hareket etmelidir. Fırıncılar ekmek çıkarmak istemiyorlarsa belediye emval-i metruke fırınlarına vaz’iyed etmeli ve halkın ekmeğini temin eylemelidir. Bu mesele etrafında cihet-i askeriyenin de meşgul olmasını temenni ederiz. ‘Vilayet Haberler: Ekmek Meselesi’, Türk Sesi, 15 August 1923, p.2.

67 ‘FIGS’, summer 1923. NARA, Izmir consular records, box 018, 1923.

68 Serçe, 1923 Senesi Izmir Vilayeti İstatistiği, vol. II, p.232.

69 For an excellent discussion of the railroad strike, including the list of workers’ demands, see Erkan Serçe, ‘1923 Izmir-Aydın Demiryolu Grevi: Siyasal İktidar, Sermaye ve İşçi Sınıfı Üçgeni Üzerine Bir Deneme’ [The 1923 Izmir-Aydın Railroad Strike: An Essay about the Triangle of Political Power, Capital and the Working Class], Toplum ve Bilim Vol.19, No.66 (1995), pp.86–105.

70 Ibid., p.98.

71 Ahenk had been founded in 1894. An American report estimated the daily circulation in 1925 at 1000 copies in Izmir and 500 in the surrounding provinces and described its political character as ‘conservative in all respects and in many ways (…) colorless’. NARA, Smyrna Consulate Records, Vol. 25, Notes from Smyrna, Enclosure No 1, with letter to High Commission, dated 12 June 1925.

72 ‘Tire'de belediyenin faaliyeti: halka ucuz ekmek yedirmek için bir numune fırını açıldı’ [The Tire Municipality’s Activity: A Special Bakery Has Been Opened in Order to Provide Cheap Bread for the People]’ Ahenk, 21 May 1924.

73 The measures are taken from the tables of weights and measures published every month in the Levant Trade Review. Here I consulted the November 1923 issue, p.59.

74 ‘Bir haftaya kadar ekmek ucuzlayacaktır’ [Bread To Become Cheaper Within a Week], in Ahenk, 1 July 1924.

75 Seda-yı Hakk, 3 August 1924. According to an American consular report, Seda-yı Hakk (‘The Voice of Reason/God’) was the most influential paper published in Izmir by 1925, selling 5000 copies daily. The paper was closed down following the February 1925 crackdown on the opposition. Zeki Arıkan, Izmir Basınından Seçmeler (1923-1938): II. Cilt I. Kitap (Izmir: Izmir Büyükşehir Belediyesi Kültür Yayınları, 2003), pp.22–3.

76 Seda-yı Hakk, 15 August 1924.

77 This would have been between 0.78 and 1.06 okka. Since the standard weight of one loaf of bread was 1 okka, this equals about one loaf per person per day. Quataert, ‘Economic Climate’, p.1154.

78 Like today, bread was probably complemented with olives, cooked legumes or, if affordable, cheese and other dairy products. (Greek) POWs in Turkey received 1 kilo of bread per day, along with some dried legumes, potatoes and other foodstuffs in 1921. A German(?) doctor found this ration to be more than sufficient. Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA): BOA HR.İM 60/28, 3 March 1922. I would like to thank Zeynep Türkyılmaz (Forum Transnationale Studien, Berlin) for making the file available to me.

79 Rent was not an issue: during the first years of the republic, state servants in Izmir were often allowed to live in abandoned houses (usually those owned by Greek citizens) for free. See Morack, The Dowry of the State? The Politics of Abandoned Property and Nation-Building in Turkey, 1921–1945, pp.285–86.

80 ‘Harab Oluyoruz (Delilerin Miktarı)’ [We are Collapsing (The Number of Crazy People)], in Ahenk, 24 September 1924.

81 ‘Ekmek Derdi’ [The Bread Problem], in Anadolu, 18 February 1925, in Arıkan, Izmir Basınından Seçmeler (1923-1938), pp.130–31.

82 1 kuruş was subdivided into 40 para, so 20 para was 0.5 kuruş.

83 ‘Ekmek Derdi’. Capitalization (probably representing bold print in the original text) taken from Arıkan.

84 Seda-yı Hakk, 23 and 24 February 1925.

85 ‘Ekmek Meselesi’ [The Bread Question], in Yanık Yurt/Hizmet, 12 February 1926.

86 Brief information respecting certain political matters. From Consul Samuel W. Honaker. American consulate Smyrna, Turkey, 7 January 1926, pp.10–11. To U.S. High Commission, Constantinople. NARA, Smyrna consulate, Box 029, 1926.

87 Başbakanlık Cumhuriyet Arşivi (CA), CA 272…12.51.114.23., 31 January 1927. The case illustrates how short of cash (and skilled, hence expensive, labor) the government was. It also seems possible that, just as in the case of the other mill, a local miller was successfully trying to get a competing mill off the market. In their correspondence, neither the Ministry of Finance nor that of Interior Affairs mentioned the possibility of running the mill as public property.

88 See Quataert, ‘The Economic Climate of the “Young Turk Revolution” in 1908’, p.1156.

89 Ibid., p.1157.

90 Consul-General Edmonds to Lindsay, Smyrna, October 31, 1924. FO 371/10228/E 9733.

91 M.B. Thom, Mardin, 16 August 1915, to Peet, ABC bh. Cited in Hans-Lukas Kieser, Der verpasste Friede: Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Türkei 1839 - 1938 (Zürich: Chronos, 2000), p.336.

92 LTR vol. 11, no. 12 (1923), p.642.

93 According to the monthly reports of the Ionian Bank in Istanbul published in the Levant Trade Review, vol. 10, no. 12 (1922) – vol. 12, no. 9 (1925).

94 LTR February, March, April mention the duty, which was 95 kuruş per 100 kilos, a fivefold increase on the previous one.

95 LTR vol 10, no. 10, report about September 1923.

96 See Jerry Markham, A Financial History of the United States: From J.P. Morgan to the Institutional Investor (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002), p.103.

97 Mehmet Şevki, ‘Çaresine Bakalım’ [Let’s Find a Solution], in Ahenk, 7 December/Kanunuevvel 1924.

98 Ibid.

99 M. Şevki, ‘Nasıl Çalışmalıyız?’ [How We Need to Work] in Ahenk, 19 May 1926. The intermediaries, in turn, could put their money to use by investing in urban infrastructure (thus replacing foreign capital). The cooperative idea was probably inspired by a report on economic life in British Mandate Palestine (‘New Life in the Jewish Homeland’) that Ahenk had published the previous day: ‘Musevi Vatanında Yeni Hayat’[New Life in the Jewish Homeland], in Ahenk 18 May 1926.

100 See Onur İnal, ‘Fruits of Empire: Figs, Raisins, and Transformation of Western Anatolia in the Late Nineteenth Century’, forthcoming in Environment and History. doi: 10.3197/096734018X15254461646404.

101 Emphasis mine. Levant Trade Review vol. 12, no. 5, May 1924, p.220.

102 Literally: if we tend to them, they shall be vineyards, if we do not, they shall be rocks. Çiftçi Necati, ‘Emval-i metruke bağlar ne olacak?’ [What Will Happen with the Abandoned Property Vineyards?] in Türk Sesi, 14 March 1924.

103 Çiftçi Necati, ‘Bağlar Sökülüyor’ [The Vineyards are Going to Waste], in Türk Sesi, 28 September 1923.

104 ‘Satmadım duruyor’ (I have not sold, it is still there). This may either be a reference to him not selling the produce, waiting for prices to rise, or to the vineyard waiting to be tended to again.

105 ‘Bağcılığın İflası’ [The Collapse of Viniculture], in Türk Sesi, 10 October 1923.

106 ‘Bizde Halıcılık ve Dokumacılık’ [Carpetmaking and Weaving in our Culture] in Anadolu, 21 July 1924 in Zeki Arıkan, Izmir Basınından Seçmeler (1923-1938): II. Cilt I. Kitap, pp.114–18.

107 Second quality Anatolian wheat only became available in October 1924. Numbers taken from the monthly retrospective reports of the Ionian Bank in Istanbul published in the Levant Trade Review, vol. 11, no 9 (1923) – vol. 13 no. 12 (1926). Available online at http://www.dlir.org/eresources/93-american-board-periodical-collection/205-the-levant-trade-review.html.

108 In order to compare pre-war and post-war values, the Levant Trade Review converted gold liras into paper money, multiplying the amount by factor 8.20. Levant Trade Review vol. 14, no.1 (1926), p.16.

109 Özbek, ‘Kemalist Rejim ve Popülizm Sınırları: Büyük Buhran ve Buğday Alım Politikaları’, p.221.