Mapping Memory

Together with the Islands of Bozcaada (Tenedos) and Gökçeada (Imbros), the Greeks of Istanbul (Constantinopolitans) were excluded from the Lausanne population exchange convention of 1923. With its origins dating back to the Byzantine era, this community predates the rise of nationalism and the emergence of resulting territorial disputes and enmities that have soured twentieth-century Greek-Turkish relations. The 1942 wealth tax, the 1955 Istanbul Pogrom and other, Cyprus-related persecution are only some of the episodes which together constitute a collective memory of marginalization and duress. The 1964 expulsion of Greeks from Istanbul ostensibly targeted around 12,500 Greek passport-holders, but intermarriage with fellow Greeks holding Turkish nationality meant that a far larger number, about 30,000 inhabitants, found themselves forcibly relocated to Greece. They were only allowed to take a few possessions – “twenty kilos and twenty dollars” – and obliged to renounce their remaining property. Few had ever been to Greece before.

The Greek communities of Istanbul shrank dramatically as a consequence, from around 30% of Istanbul’s population at the start of the twentieth century to about 0.01% today. For diaspora communities in Athens and elsewhere, Istanbuli life stories are important touchstones of identity, which I investigated as part of my ethnographic research. This research has demonstrated that members of the Greek-Istanbuli diaspora continue to “inhabit” Istanbul through shared memory work: collecting artefacts and archiving documents with which to create museum-like displays in private houses, community centres and churches, archiving, and organising talks and exhibitions.

Mapping this activity is urgent. The communities are dwindling with age, yet their experiences are unrecognised at official levels. Exactly how to do this is another matter: recognising the significance of Greek heritages is problematic at any official level in Turkey, as to do so would shine a spotlight on the state-condoned subjugation. How can heritage representation function in such contexts?

My response to this has been to bypass official channels through an online memory map that I curate, as well as through filmmaking. Both are community co-productions, working creatively and ethically with individuals to capture stories, emotions, memories, and complexities that will otherwise be lost with the passing of time and generations. This recourse to unconventional media in heritage representations has benefits: these media can capture apparently “trivial” stories that nonetheless hold profound meaning for people’s lives. My purpose is simply to represent community heritage and memory – and not to be spectacular, or even didactic, as a museum or heritage site might aim to be. Secondly, I can engage with sensory and emotional dimensions of memory and heritage that can be very difficult to convey in other ways.

These may seem to lack the heft of “facts”, “events”, and the geopolitical shifts addressed in official as well as much academic historiography. Yet remembering in a sensory fashion is a key way for people to reinhabit places from which they have been displaced. It is a reconstructive activity, which involves mentally and imaginatively remaking the world of one’s past life in vivid detail. My participants use their trove of stories, objects and photographs to access and remake former lives and places through sensory evocation. Indeed, I would argue that it is only though these new approaches, methods, and media that we can do full justice to these heritages: in the double sense of accurate rendering on the one hand, and political recognition on the other.

To take an example, my film Life After Life follows the story of one man, Dimitris, displaced from Istanbul to Athens aged 17 in 1964, because his father held Greek citizenship. His parents died in Athens, but instructed their son to rebury their bones in the historic Istanbuli Greek cemetery, Balıklı, of their original home. No other medium, in my view, can better capture the emotional power and resonance of this man’s journey, characterised by collective negotiations of loss, grievance, trauma and belonging. The film also includes other stories of the Greeks of Istanbul told by the community members in Athens, Imbroz (Gökçeada) and Istanbul.

This approach should prompt us to reflect on the modalities of representation for minority histories, both in terms of their silencing in official heritage channels, and how we can best share such histories in a fashion that respects their emotional, sensory and richness and their transcendent resonances for common human experiences.