Milk Kinship Between Empires

I am sipping tea under a plane tree in the cool afternoon, in Görükle. I am about to hear a hidden story about the Mehmet Ali dynasty. [1] Mehmet Ali was born in 1769 in Kavala, modern-day Greece, and became a governor of Egypt in 1804, where he would establish his own dynasty, and lay the foundations of modern Egypt. Görukle is in Bursa (Türkiye), far from Kavala, Alexandria, or Istanbul — an odd place to gather intimate knowledge about the dynasty.

My meeting is with Mr. Fevzi Gültekin, an 87-year-old resident of Görukle whose family moved here from Palia Kavala, a village located about 20 km north of Kavala, as part of the Lausanne Exchange. He is a fellow Alexandrian and intimately linked to the Mehmet Ali dynasty in Egypt. His grandmother breastfed King Faruk, while his mother breastfed one of King Faruk’s daughters, Princess Farial. In this village locals who were settled from Kavala as part of the Lausanne Exchange still take pride in being descendants of Mehmet Ali.

FEVZI GÜLTEKIN AT THE LAUSANNE EXCHANGE MUSEUM. ON THE WALL ABOVE HIM IS A COPY OF HIS MOTHER’S PRIMARY SCHOOL DIPLOMA.

I asked why the Egyptian royal family selected his grandmother for this role. Fevzi suggested that one possible reason is that she was a distant relative of Mehmet Ali, whose own roots may lie in Palia Kavala. [2] Such a choice would align with the tradition of Mehmet Ali’s patrimonial rule. When Mehmet Ali established his dynasty, he appointed individuals from Kavala to key positions based on their loyalty. [3] A century on, Mehmet Ali’s descendants chose a wet nurse from the same family as their ancestor, instead of appointing someone within Egypt. According to Fevzi, his grandmother fed King Faruk well, and he grew up to be a “strong, healthy child”. The dynasty must have been satisfied, as once Faruk was expecting a new baby in 1938, he invited the grandmother’s daughter, Fatma, to Alexandria.

Yet there was a snag: in 1923, with the signing of Lausanne Treaty, Fatma’s family was moved to Görükle (previously Kouvaklio) to Bursa, Türkiye. They were gradually becoming accustomed to speaking only in Turkish instead of their local dialect, which was a mixture of Bulgarian, Greek, and Turkish. But kinship is kinship, and they responded to King Faruk’s call with enthusiasm.

The late Ottoman Empire meticulously recorded immigrants’ places of origin. [4]  The early Republic by contrast made a deliberate effort to sever the Lausanne immigrants’ ties to their former homelands. What is surprising in Fevzi’s story is that the modern Turkish Republic permitted the Egyptian government to access its records regarding the settlement details of immigrants from Palia Kavala.  Soon after, local police in Görükle informed the public that the Faruk dynasty was searching for another wetnurse. Meanwhile, Fatima, the original wet nurse’s daughter, was pregnant with Fevzi. She volunteered to travel to Egypt to breastfeed Princess Farial. It was in Egypt that she gave birth to Fevzi.

FEVZI GÜLTEKIN, THE AUTHOR AND MR. ALI KORKUT, CHAIR OF THE LAUSANNE EXCHANGEES ASSOCIATION IN BURSA.

Fatma spent ten months in Egypt, caring for both Fevzi and Farial, returning to Görükle in 1940.  “I might have been born in a palace in Alexandria” Fevzi says, hinting at the Montaza Palace. Fevzi does not have many stories to tell of the period, as his mother’s time in Egypt was not a talking point in his family. In 1951 the royal summons came again. Fatma once again heeded its call.  But she never made the journey. Nasser’s Free Officers initiated a coup in Egypt. Fevzi is grateful that the coup happened when it did: Nasser might have prevented his mother from returning to Türkiye. However, the new regime cut off the monthly payments that had previously been paid, and Fevzi lost contact with the Mehmet Ali dynasty, including Princess Farial, who passed away in 2009.

Fevzi’s story highlights the transition from the dynasties of the nineteenth century, cosmopolitan and at at the same time bound by enduring kinship ties, to more rigid twentieth-century forms of citizenship. With the demise of dynasties open to hybrid exchange (including the intimate exchanges of wetnursing), maintaining such cross-border connections came to seem suspect, or at least dated.

Fevzi recalls that when he was around seventeen years old, he wrote to a national magazine, Hayat Mecmuası, to ask for the address of princess Farial. The magazine published his inquiry, but could not help him: the address was “Aydınlığa çıkmamıştır”.  Fevzi believes that his family’s relationship with the royal family could have been maintained, had it not been for the coup in 1952 : “Maybe I would have gone to Egypt, or they [the dynasty] would have come here.” When I ask him how he feels about being an Alexandrian, native of one of the most cosmopolitan towns in the Mediterranean, he does not give a direct answer. Instead, he expresses a subtle annoyance about the difficulty he faces when spelling his birthplace, as Turks often do not recognize the name “İskenderiyye” (Alexandria).

FEVZI DRINKING TEA WITH BAYRAM IN THE MUSEUM’S COURYARD

Our conversation highlighted several significant points regarding statehood and mobility in Türkiye and Egypt. First, the Mehmet Ali dynasty’s preference for finding a wet nurse among their relatives rather than hiring someone locally suggests their continued reliance on familial networks well into the early twentieth century. Second, the residents of Görükle honored the request despite being displaced from Kavala and adapting to a new form of national citizenship. Third, the story of Fatma and her mother seems to be on the verge of being forgotten. Fevzi lacks a collection of photos or records from the land of his birth and holds only his national identity card, which indicates his birthplace. This lack of documentation may stem from the fact that all correspondence between the royal family and his family passed through the local police station. It is possible that the Egyptian royal family intended that his mother remain out of the public eye.

Even more importantly, Fevzi avoided asking his mother questions about her time in Egypt. As we conclude our conversation, Fevzi and I step outside the museum, where Fevzi begins to sip his tea alongside Bayram Akıncı, the museum’s curator. Located in the heart of Görükle, the museum has only recently opened. Fevzi gestures toward the building and says to Bayram, “This museum has been beneficial,” steering the conversation toward his contributions to the village as a mayor. As Bayram nods in agreement, I gaze at the remnants of Roman columns in the museum’s courtyard. Alexander the Great significantly influenced Mehmet Ali, two Macedonians who ruled Egypt. Here stands a testament to the fact that his dynasty made great efforts to remain loyal to its roots, centuries later, and far from Macedonia.

Notes

[1] Mehmet Ali is the “Turkified” name of the Egyptian ruler also known as Muhammad Ali. In this blog I follow my interviewee’s practice in using the former version. For a historiographical appraisal see E. Toledano, “Mehmet Ali Paşa or Muhammad Ali Basha? An historiographic appraisal in the wake of a recent book”, Middle Eastern Studies, 21.4 (1985): 141-159.

[2] The details of Mehmet Ali’s birth are unclear. Khaled Fehmy, Mehmed Ali, p. 4.

[3] E. Frantuono, Governing migration in the late Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024), p. 147.

[4] E. Frantuono, Governing migration in the late Ottoman Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2024), p. 147.

MAIN IMAGE: THE LAUSANNE EXCHANGE MUSEUM IN GÖRÜKLE