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Nikola Haddad-Edizel, 2009

The word Levantine rings in my ears since I was born. It comes to mind when I am asked about my origins in casual conversation. The term always requires a long-winded explanation; “Levantine?” one would say. In my family, the term awakens a nostalgia very much linked to a land and a time that no longer have the same meaning. It evokes a sense of melancholy displacement, very much in tune with the sounds of the Mediterranean. It uses many languages (Italian, French, Turkish, Arabic, Greek), yet claims none as its own. It is profoundly immersed in its fragmented genealogy and its stories which take place mostly, yet not exclusively in Izmir. It is, so to speak, a remnant of a turbulent past of relocation and displacement. Such an explanation however only raises more questions; it is nowadays customary to describe oneself ethnically, throwing around terms like German, Spanish, Greek, and such answers are often accepted as explanations in themselves. The statement “I am Greek” presupposes a territory, a language, a religion, a history all descriptive of an identity. It is also a marker of difference; being Greek means not being Turkish, Macedonian or Balkan. The term also refers to a political entity, a nation state, government acting on behalf of its identifiable people. To call oneself Greek is to embody all of these associated meanings. These lines are nonetheless easy to blur; to call oneself Levantine (which for all we know includes a bit of Greek in it) brings about a whole other bundle of such meanings. I could say my family comes from Greece, Turkey, Syria, Italy, Austria, Armenia, yet does it mean that I embody every possible meaning included in these national terms? Hardly.

Geographically speaking, the Levant traditionally designates the eastern Mediterranean coast, stretching possibly from Alexandria to Istanbul, name found mostly in European travel literature of the 18th century on the region. It is the land to the east, where the sun rises quite literally in French. Levantine in this sense groups a large and diverse population, many national discourses in apparent conflict, a long discontinuous history and a juxtaposed ancient archaeology. It fundamentally presupposes a relative location where the West and its culture are the referent. It is also a term used in the historiography of the Ottoman Empire. In this setting, it designates a community of Europeans having moved to Ottoman port-cities to conduct commercial activities. Over the course of a few generations, this community integrates itself to the cosmopolitan setting of these cities. It is neither Ottoman nor European in its imaginings, but stands out as predominantly Catholic. It is a self-defined title, as much as it is a colonial category of difference designating those “bastard” and “denaturalised” people. It is socially and culturally flexible because of its consciousness of mixed genealogy. It escapes ethnic or national categories and yet assumes them according to circumstances. It is to this extent a hybrid identity¹.

This paper’s goal is to examine various accounts that seek to define a Levantine identity and ultimately to offer a sketch of it. In a modern setting of rigid boundaries, “othering” and heritage, nationalism remains pervasive to any discussion on cultural identity. However, hybrid identities, such as Levantine identity, challenge the legitimacy of such national models. Benedict Anderson provides a critical definition and analysis of nationalism (as “imagined” community) that will be used as a theoretical base for the discussion of the Levantine case. In Les identités meurtrières, Amin Maalouf opens the question of identity as a potentially destructive force and seeks to revise it. His discussion offers a workable premise for delineating identity beyond its national frames. Moreover, Levantine is a term laden with history. To omit a historiographical investigation of the term would be comparable to preparing a cake without flour; this identity is challenging by virtue of its nebulous and polychromatic history, the plaster that glues it all together. Late Ottoman Izmir encapsulates this Levantine spirit quite accurately: a cosmopolitan bloom of the Mediterranean once harbouring a remarkably diverse population inevitably succumbs to highly inflammable discourses of difference. Izmir also happens to be the home of many personal anecdotes and narratives that stir my own sense of identity. These sources include Jak Edizel’s memories of the Izmir fire on tapes, the fictional world Loren Edizel creates around memories of this city and community and a correspondence with Andrew Simes, a spokesperson for the Levantine community of Izmir. These accounts capture the present day nostalgia of the Levantine identity.

To start off: what is identity? Les identités meurtrières by Amin Maalouf explores this question to an open end. He bases his discussion on his own experience with identity, mixed and “Levantine” as it is². He builds a philosophical discussion of identity with a primary concern, captured accurately in the title: the violence often associated to identity discourses. Such discourses originate from tribal mentalities, polarizing identity into “us” and “them” dichotomies. Every human being, Maalouf declares, has a sense of identity based on many parts from mundane living habits, family, ethnicity, religion, language and so on, which constantly shifts with time: “L’identité n’est pas donnée une fois pour toutes, elle se construit et se transforme tout au long de l’existence”³. Identity is profoundly linked to one’s experience of the world, to one’s environment either social, cultural, geographic or psychological. Thus, Maalouf warns the reader of the danger and absurdity imminent in those tendencies essentializing identity into a pure and crystallized, “deep within” facet of existence. On that note, he observes that we have a tendency to recognize ourselves in the facet of our identity that is the most marginalized and subject to attack. Religious identity tends to be the most problematic of them, since it contains universalist epistemologies and cosmologies in its definition. Identity is like a panther, Maalouf describes: it kills when persecuted, when it is let loose and when it is harmed, yet in its wild temperament, it can also be tamed. He duly proposes an alternative for dealing with the slippery and deadly concept of identity, putting aside previous treatments, such as “community” based politics. His alternative, a vision for a globalizing world articulated with inspiring idealism, lies in acceptance and multiplicity: acceptance of oneself, of the “other” and of the polymorphous nature of identity, and multiplicity in the achievement of a globalised vision of identity through multilingualism and knowledge of diverse cultural codes. Spoken like a Levantine, I would say⁴.

Maalouf’s account is fundamentally antinationalist. Yet, what exactly does nationalism mean in terms of identity? Anderson’s view states that a nation is an imagined political community. It is based on a symbolic sense of communal affinity delimited by territorial claims, shared language and common history. His analysis of nationalism links it to the development of secularism, socialism, imperialism and national “print-languages”. Secularism and socialism emerge from Enlightenment thinking, which sought to undo religious absolutism. The nation thus rises as a new social paradigm out of a shift from cosmological hierarchy to horizontal society, from sacred to vernacular. Anderson argues that the invention of the printing press and the commercialization of texts were crucial in forming national languages, what he calls “print-capitalism”. It is through the printing industry that vernacular languages triumph over a universal, sacred and unspoken language (Latin). The development of the press reinforces an idea of simultaneity, where readers sharing the same vernacular script also become conscious of a shared temporality and history, no longer associated to cosmological explanations provided by religion. This shared linguistic, temporal and historical context makes it possible for imagining communities beyond everyday life surroundings, creating cultural boundaries and fragmented historical narratives. In the height of colonialism during the 18^th and 19^thcentury, such imagined discourse also becomes a tool for manufacturing uniformity and allegiance. Nationalism is, to this extent, very much a colonialist discourse; an empire lives longest when it creates and promotes an icon for itself territorially. It allows it to create symbolic allegiances amongst its “provinces” rooting them in a shared cultural-historical consciousness. Such delimitations necessarily close off anything beyond their reach, which in turn also become a symbolic entity of exclusion, of an “other”.

The Levantine identity stands out as a plural and flexible one, one that finds itself on the crux of many competing national models. Ambler, in his fiction novel The Levanter, provides a definition of a Levantine identity in the following passage:

“The reason why Michael is so difficult to understand- especially for journalists- is that he is not one person but a committee of several. There is, for instance, the Greek money-changer with thing fingers moving unceasingly as he makes lightning calculations on an abacus; there is the brooding, sad-eyed Armenian bazaar trader who pretends to be slow-witted, but is, in fact, devious beyond belief; there is the stuffy, no-nonsense Englishman trained as an engineer; there is the affable, silk-suited young man of affairs with smile lines at the corner of wide, limpid con-man eyes; there is the mother-fixated managing director of the Agence Howell, defensive, sententious and given to speechifying; and there is the one I particularly like who… but why go on?”⁵

Such a shape-shifting persona has often been used to designate a Levantine ethos. Michael proves to be quite a resourceful character, culturally sensitive and able to speak the lingo of any person he meets throughout the book. He is conscious of his peculiarity by virtue of his mixed family history. It is this very chameleon-like facet of him that makes him a successful character at the end of the novel. He is able to rally himself to or distance himself from contemporary causes, whether it is with the Syrian Baathist government that subsidises his business ventures, the PLO faction that infiltrates one of his factories to produce explosives or the Israeli authorities from which he seeks help. It is without a doubt a source of pride and security for this character. Ambler perhaps chooses such a malleable ethos for his main character precisely for the element of intrigue and cunning it evokes. Note that the characteristics of Michael are enumerated through racial/national stereotypes. Even though such categories come off as essentialist when discussing identity, they very much reflect the discourse out of which the Levantine identity was borne, as will be discussed further when looking at Izmir.

Using a very similar definition, Naaman writes Les Levantins during the Lebanese civil war in an attempt to conciliate warring sectarian communities under a common identity. According to Naaman, Levantines can all identify themselves to a “race”. One could call his account a Pan-Levantinism of sorts. He builds his analysis by identifying a common set of characteristic traits, of social factors, of historical events that unite all people of the Levant from Alexandria to Istanbul. Such factors put together, he argues, act as a foundational common ground to acceptance, tolerance and unity. He also defines Levantine as marginal, sitting between two chairs, one of the West and one of the East, to use his language. In this marginality can also be found diversity and as a result, perpetual sense of minority. The Levantine in his own words: “Ces batards ont adoptés le feu turc, l’économie de l’esprit juif, la générosité et la sagesse arabe, l’habileté phénicienne, la fierté de leurs origines lointaines.”⁶ Thus it is made of composite parts, yet belonging to none. His attempt to find a common ground is undermined by the very language he uses to define it. This enumeration of racial stereotypes collapsed under the orientalist title “bastard” clearly reveals a taken-for-granted and a theoretical shallowness. With such a definition, he assumes a conceptual basis that goes against the very idea of diversity and marginality involved in {Levantine} and uses nationalist and racist discourse to categorize a “community” that is, by its very nature, problematic to such categorizations. To come back to Anderson: “Theorists of nationalism have often been perplexed (…) by (…) the ‘political’ power of nationalisms vs. their philosophical poverty and even incoherence. In other words, unlike most other isms, nationalism has never produced its own grand thinkers”.

In the last two accounts, the Levantine identity reveals itself to be made up of composite ethnic parts. History considered, this Levantine identity is mostly attributed to eastern Mediterranean port cities. It is the result of a cosmopolitanism that developed with the movement of peoples within the Ottoman Empire and its relation to its Western Mediterranean counterparts. Cosmopolitanism, for my purposes, designates an urban setting in which diverse communities coexist and interact and in so doing form a common relational space. It is a form of homogeneity within heterogeneity⁷. The juxtapositions of modes and mores do raise political and social questions along the lines of race and class, yet along these blurred delineations, new mores and modes are created. Contact in such an environment happens on many levels, institutional or social, but in the end identity at its core is experienced socially. The definition to be used in this discussion does not presuppose Kantian or colonial designations of the term. Rather, it is very much rooted in the particular historical setting of its happening, as Driessen defines it in his discussion of Izmir in “Mediterranean Port Cities”. It refers to a cultural and linguistic interpenetration that was publicly expressed in Izmir’s social life. Citizens share parcels of previous ways of life with ‘others’ and everyone becomes to this extent, a ‘familiarized other’. In Izmir, we see this happening not only on a linguistic level⁸, but also on a habitual level. The apparatus for this cultural dialogue goes beyond colonial or imperial institutions, as the end product is an integration of several life-styles. This cosmopolitan balance is however very fragile, as we will see. Once national models start seeping in, identity becomes transfixed, de-historicized and polarised, no longer inspired by the colours of a mundane cultural plurality.

Izmir is by many definitions a Levantine city. It shares one such definition with many others along the eastern Mediterranean coast, to name a few, Istanbul, Beirut and Alexandria. Its history however demarcates it with an urbanity of its own and a fire in 1922 at the end of the Turkish War of Independence, which still to this day poses a historiographical problem. The following discussion aims at locating the premises for a Levantine identity within the city’s late Ottoman history. It examines the accounts of several historians who have contributed to the city’s historiography, each identifying different factors leading to a ‘Levantine’ designation.

Goffman provides us with preliminary economic factors that lead to Izmir’s cosmopolitanism of the 19^th century. Prior to the 17^th century, Izmir is a sleepy fishing and farming town that, like many villages around it, produces raw material such as raisins, figs, cotton and grains exclusively for Istanbul. The silk trade would pass through Chios which was controlled by the Genoese not far from Izmir. It is only after the Ottoman conquest of Chios in 1566 that Izmir starts to draw commercial activity from abroad⁹. It becomes an ideal port of trade, sheltered by a large bay, leading to a fertile valley and containing a considerable Christian minority, mostly Greek. Venetian and Genoese merchants are the first to settle in the city and establish trade connections with the local Christians, willing to make exchanges. The Capitulations granting trade permits to European kingdoms open Izmir to more foreign activity, eventually making it commercially independent from Istanbul. Throughout the 17^th and 18^th century, waves of Armenians, Spanish Jews, Greeks and Europeans end up in the city, all lured by its commercial assets. By the 19^th century, Izmir is recognized as a bustling, intellectually active and modern cosmopolitan city. It is important to note from Goffman’s account that the Sublime Porte’s priorities were to make Izmir economically subject to Istanbul. Izmir’s growth can thus be seen as a situation that arose out of the Empire’s control. The Empire’s policy is therefore revised in the 19^th C, as it wants to gain from the situation.

Georgelin, in La fin de Smyrne explores the evolution of the city’s cosmopolitan setting and, as the title mentions, the conditions of its demise. His account focuses on the political interactions between Izmir’s diverse communities, particularly on the tension points that gave rise to destructive conflicting nationalisms. His sources vary from travel literature, Izmir resident anecdotes/biographies, as well as some archival material, mostly from Greek Orthodox churches and the French consulate. Unfortunately, as Georgelin and other consulted historians mention (notably Goffman and Smyrnelis), Ottoman sources are quite sparse when it comes to social life.

Georgelin introduces his discussion by observing that the city has an ancient and mixed history, built on discontinuities and ruptures (Ionia, Persia, Rome, Byzantium, Mongols, Ottomans, and so on). In a 19^th century setting, Smyrna becomes an object of territorial nostalgia for the newly imagined Greek nation. It seeks not only to re-unite itself with a long lost classical history, but to retrieve a considerable Greek orthodox population that had been living in Smyrna for generations since the fall of Constantinople. This population is, by this time, more “Smyrnian” than Greek, a fixture of the urban site rather than a foreign population. From Renaissance on, Venetian and Genovese merchants are commercially active in the Aegean, settling in Izmir to form its earliest European community. Ottoman Turks, who constitute the majority throughout the city’s history , also settle in since its conquest in 1424¹¹. In the 17^th century, Smyrna witnesses an economic thrust and becomes the main exportation port of the Ottoman Empire towards the West. Subsequently, its demography changes due to waves of foreign merchants and Armenian and Jewish refugees. By the 19th century, Izmir develops a modern urbanity beyond that of a national (Tanzımat Ottoman, in this case) frame. At this period, it is often cited as the “perle de l’orient” with its coffee shops and opera houses, its new quays, its churches and mosques in shared space, its flavourful mix of cultures¹². It is also a time when Greek Ottomans flock into the city to escape the Greek War of Independence. This newly settled population gives a particularly Greek character to the city, changing its demography once again in favour of a Christian minority. In reaction, Imperial Ottoman presence, within this strong current of western influence, asserts itself monumentally with the Konak square and a military port¹³. Georgelin defines the peculiar social circumstance as a “brassage ethno-religieux”, made up of several distinct cultural units all participating in the city’s growth.

Georgelin describes Izmir as a semi-colonial port city at the borders of the empire, heavily influenced by the West, earning the title “Gâvur Izmir”¹⁴. The urban space develops itself as the empire weakens and decentralises. Its diversity favours economic activity, suburbanisation and industrialisation. The ideological hierarchy of the ottoman state (millet) forces each local group and European consulate to uphold its reputation¹⁵. This plural modern space instigates non-reducible identity discourses: Izmir becomes a conflict zone for European imperialism, Greek, Armenian and Turkish nationalism. Yet, because it regroups so many diverse ethno-religious entities, it is culturally vibrant and stands out as an educational pole: a favourable breeding ground for colonialist and nationalist discourse¹⁶. European schools, not necessarily ethnically exclusive, are viewed as technically and methodologically superior. Such schools also teach history and language of their original country. For instance, to know French is a sign of distinction. French Missionary schools thus cater not only to French consulate protégés but also to the city’s upper echelon. The program of such schools favours western geography, values and history. It therefore plants colonial politics between the millets, the consulates and the ottoman authorities through the education of Izmir’s catholic minorities.

With Abdülhamit’s rule, the parliament is abolished in 1878 and many policies are put in place to centralise Ottoman rule. The Ottoman state restructures itself in a discourse of pan-Islamism and Ottomanism, which make universalizing identity claims based on a particular ethos: Muslim and Ottoman Turkish. Such measures ferment parallel nationalist discourses, such as Armenian and Greek resistance movements. Nationalisms echo from outside to Izmir, and politicise the existent communities, in some cases leading to activism and terrorism¹⁷. For this reason, Izmir remains a problematic city for the empire: the vali of Izmir could only last with a solid polyglossy, liberal thinking and delicate diplomatic reasoning with the competing authorities, that is, the consulates and the millets. In the eyes of the Ottoman administration, Izmir stands out as a pariah, resisting the imperial rule by acknowledging either Greek or European supremacy¹⁸. Consequently, each community, under the cover of their respective religiously defined millets, organize themselves politically¹⁹.

On the other hand, the citizens are conscious that an economic factor must be preserved. European presence boosts business and native communities work to preserve this status quo of multiplicity and pacific agreement. Georgelin offers an anecdote to illustrate this situation: Yanako Frontier, a French Levantine is murdered in a Greek coffee shop by two Turkish soldiers who are in Izmir temporarily during a brawl. Local witnesses cover up the story and publicly incriminate the two soldiers for having instilled conflict. Yanako was Christian and naturalised to the Greek community and the soldiers were not from Izmir. Such inter-community frictions were in most cases imported from outside, from people who were not used to the delicate social dynamics of Izmir. In 1908, Izmir’s political setting changes once again as the Young Turks overthrow Abdülhamit. A short-lived fraternity unites the competing communities, as they celebrate this renewed symbolic democracy. However, no unity amongst such communities is declared. The leading party, the Committee for Union and Progress, instils distrust in European consulates with its strong modernist and nationalist agenda. The French consul at the time expresses his scepticism in his correspondences with the French government: “there is no ottoman nation in its facts. The ‘French’ or ‘German’ definitions of nation are opposite to the idea of an Ottoman patrie”²⁰. The socio-cultural setting of the city is in fact so possessed by parallel national discourses that the C.U.P’s agenda falls short in instilling its comprehensive national belonging. As Georgelin puts it: “La richesse de Smyrne n’est pas musulmane et les modèles bourgeois ostentatoires développés dans cette ville du Levant demeure inaccessibles à la plupart des turcs ottomans.”²¹ By 1922, the city has experienced an Ottoman defeat, followed by four years of heavy-handed Greek administration which does not grasp the city’s cosmopolitan premise. A match was soon to be lit.

According to Smyrnelis’ analysis in Une société hors de soi, ethnicity, religion and jurisdiction stand as the three main factors of identity in 19th Century Izmir. She builds her account by exploring an apparent dichotomy in identity: institutional identity and social identity, paying attention to the interactions between various entities that made up the city’s cultural fabric. Izmir’s complex setting brings forth this distinction; diversity in population and commercial activity determine the city’s spatial organisation, its institutions and its social life. At its height in the late Tanzimat, one could find Greek quarters, Jewish quarters, Armenian quarters, European quarters, and Turkish quarters juxtaposed. Institutional identity defines itself on paper in status and recognition by legislative bodies whereas social identity is determined by lifestyle and habits, which for the most part do not reflect the rigid frames of institutions²².

For 19^th century Ottoman Izmir, the millet system, the capitulations and Tanzimat reforms shape the institutional framework. Millets are ethno-confessional communities which regroup non-Muslims Ottoman subjects and act as a legislative unit under the Ottoman administration, e.g. Greek Orthodox patriarchs are at the head of the Greek orthodox millet, to which Greek Orthodox Ottoman subjects respond legislatively. In some cases, millets have ethnic predispositions that include individuals beyond religious demarcations, such as catholic Greeks figuring in the Greek Orthodox archives, likewise for the Armenian Apostolic millet²³. Thus, cases of multiple millet belonging are quite common in Izmir, especially in cases of intermarriage²⁴. European colonies are organised through respective consulates, which are immersed in diplomatic and economic status determined by the Capitulations. The consul remains the only responsible party and interlocutor to the Ottoman authorities on behalf of his expatriated community. He is also affiliated to commercial institutions such as the Levant Company or the Chambre de commerce de Marseille.²⁵ This institution is exclusively based on ethnicity, which means that members of a European “colony” are also part of Catholic or Protestant millets. It is important to consider that in the second half of the 19^th century many European countries reform their identity models towards nation-state constitutions. The Ottoman Empire aligns itself to these same models, as it is no longer in measure to contest them culturally. Thus, it invents a nationality for itself²⁶ with the principal goals of equality and union among all Ottoman citizens. The conditions of such goals are solely based on birth right without any regard for existing ethnic or confessional entities. Thus, long established communities and “colonies” still under the jurisdiction of their millets or consulates suddenly acquire an additional layer of identification.

As a result, the delineations of institutional identity become blurred during the 19^th century. To ensure that the particular rights of non-Muslim communities and European “colonies” be safeguarded (such as tax or conscription exemptions) a system of naturalisation and protection is put into practice. For instance: the children of a French catholic merchant married to a Greek orthodox woman, born on Ottoman soil thus possess five alternatives to shape their status: French citizenship, catholic millet, Greek orthodox millet, by extension Greek citizenship and finally Ottoman citizenship by birth right. These individuals could benefit from protections of each one of these institutions, which would allow for considerable commercial and statutory freedom. The multiplicity of status that is possible for such mixed individuals is problematic to the rigidity of institutional frameworks on belonging and identity. Conflicts would not thus only happen between the Ottoman administration and the different communities/colonies. The community institutions were also in strategic cultural competition against each other²⁷.

To explain the functioning of consulates within Ottoman Izmir and the millet system in the 19^th century, Smyrnelis uses the French colony as an example. The presence of French merchants in Izmir prior to 1820 was strictly regulated. Marriage outside of the “colony” was forbidden and mandates to perform commercial activity were carefully supervised. Izmir’s French population was exclusively from Marseille, committed to a very particular status and rank under the consulate. However, with the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic reforms, the demography changes considerably to include people of modest means, craftsmen, small shopkeepers, innkeepers, etc.²⁸

The hierarchies established with the previous model are progressively replaced to promote the sense of belonging to the “colony”, superseding any other distinction such as class or genealogy²⁹. However, identity does not mimic such frameworks. Individuals with citizenship or protection from a European consulate deal with Ottoman authorities through the consul. The tendency of such “colonies” is to preserve an identity proper to religion, language and foundational values of a culture within the auspices of the Empire and its multiple jurisdictions. However, many such individuals are also included in a millet by confessional belonging. Others, after marriage and integration, acquire an even larger repertoire of identities. This peculiar situation becomes possible because identity is open to interpretation by the present institutions. Protection and citizenship become means to many ends, either in commercial ventures or for security purposes. A Levantine has the possibility to collect identities as statutory commodities, tax evasion tools or veils of class distinction³⁰. In summary, Smyrnelis concludes that: “le “Levantin”, de la seconde moitie du XIXe siècle, serait donc defini avant tout par la fluidité voire la multiplicité de ses rattachements nationaux.”³¹

Sibel Zandi-Sayek continues the discussion of identity by focusing on how the spatiality of public ceremonies in Tanzimat Izmir was critical for mediating competing social and political claims. “The Gülhane Edict of 1839, the imperial rescript of the Hatt-I Humayun in 1856, which constituted the legal basis for a series of reforms known as Tanzimat, sought to redefine the relation between local religious groups and Ottoman authorities.”³² These reforms were aimed at dismantling the heterogeneity of the millet system, in which legislature and jurisdiction were organised through confessional communities affiliated to religious leaders. They promoted unified Ottoman allegiance rather than heterogeneous social constitutions based on the ethno-confessional millet system. The reforms attempted to provide a model for uniform citizenship in which these communities were given opportunities to enact these differences more publicly. The idea of an Ottoman nation imposed homogeneity on a heterogeneous system: “The reforms were based on the assumption that promoting equality among the empire’s subjects would generate firmer state and unite people ‘by the cordial ties of patriotism’”³³. Such delusions of grandeur were to catch up to the Empire sooner or later. The field for identity crises had been opened.

Izmir’s urban setting is exemplar of hybridism: Frank Street, on which public religious and secular ceremonies happened, on which cafes, restaurants, shops and banks proliferated, stands out as one such ‘relational space’. Historically, this street was the European quarter, closest to the port, where foreign merchants settled to conduct their commercial activities. By the 19^th century, this delineation changes and Frank Street becomes a hybrid space where the population goes to shop, sit in coffee shops, eat at restaurants or organise public ceremonies, usually related to religious cult. Thus, communal allegiances and social hierarchies come to the forefront as we look at public ceremonies. Zandi-Sayek gives the example of a Corpus Christi procession on May 27, 1842³⁴. The procession passes through Frank Street, escorted by Ottoman soldiers and closed by the vali. Zandi-Sayek says that this public ceremony “traced a symbolic sphere of influence, claiming this socially mixed area as an exclusively Catholic space” [p.54]. The whole space was decorated and prepared in advance for the ceremony. Zandi-Sayek engages these practices in the following: (i) as providing a tool for the community to position itself vis-à-vis the Ottoman nation or any other affiliated nation (for Catholics, France) and (ii) as allowing for a positioning vis-à-vis the other ethno-confessional communities of the city. She specifies that each ceremony of various communities is attended to by the citizens regardless of their affiliation. The celebration is contagious and inclusive. Each celebration as well as inscribing “a distinctive spatiality onto Frank Street, raising temporary claims of authority over it”³⁵ underlines the very interconnectedness and cohesiveness of the city and its citizens. However, with the advent of nationalism, such public displays of heterogeneity become symbolically charged. Frank Street would thus become an orchestra of difference on such occasions, where Easter would become an appropriate premise for Greek patriotism. With the creation of such spaces interspersed throughout the year, it is common to find religious tensions which temporarily raise awareness of communal boundaries³⁶. At the end of her discussion, Zandi-Sayek reminds us that urban spaces are not uniform stages, but multilayered sites harbouring and shaping the conditions for social identity.

The occupying Greek army parading on the sea-front of Izmir, 1919.

In its climax of plurality, Izmir’s fragile cosmopolitanism is destroyed by a massive fire. Kasaba’s account is aimed at elucidating the policies that violently separated the diverse communities that had been coexisting in Anatolia. The Lausanne Treaty in 1923 officially marks this violent separation, notably in its clauses on population exchanges. The Karamanlis, Turkish speaking Anatolian Greeks, stand out as a particularly ambiguous instance: how could such sharply defined national boundaries apply to the profoundly mixed populations of the Western Anatolian coast? Izmir can be considered in the same light: an Ottoman census in 1880 shows that roughly 60% of the city’s residents were non-Muslim and foreigners.³⁷ This population does not figure as sectarian; Jews, Armenians, Greeks, Europeans (Dutch, British, French, Italian) meet at the same coffee shops and walk along the same quays. In contrast, Izmir loses half of its population and an overwhelming majority of its non-Muslim residents between 1914 and 1927. The violent separation of non-Muslims (particularly Greeks) and Muslims in Asia Minor seals 400 years of coexistence. Kasaba points out that the analysis of such events should consider this coexistence rather than limit itself to “justifying the tragedy” or “lamenting it” from Turkish, Greek or Armenian perspectives. In his article, he thus proposes to look at the fire by profiling each perspective and showing their interconnectedness and flexibility. For the Turks, the fire of Izmir is the crowning event of a war of independence. Persecution of Armenians and Greeks is denied to be deliberate: “the difficulties these communities faced because of the war were unavoidable because of the chaotic circumstances of those years”³⁸. On the other hand, Greeks say that their mismanaged government is to blame, as well as the “wavering policies of the Great Powers”. The Turks are to blame for the losses and pain, i.e. the war crimes. What is important to gather from these accounts is that they are distinctly and diametrically opposed.

The great blunder of the Lausanne Treaty was its short-sightedness³⁹. There was more to identity than religion in Izmir’s case: the Ottomans had, with time, built a more flexible approach to include multiple overlapping categories such as tribal ties, ethnicities, occupations. “In cities like Izmir, walls did not separate neighbourhoods, and there was nothing in either the daily lives of the people or the administrative codes of the empire that required, enforced, or reinforced residential segregation.”⁴⁰ Lifestyles and occupations were also not strictly defined by such categories. Public elements of society, from the press to the municipal council, were composed of many ethnicities⁴¹. This observation goes to show that such “ethnic” distinctions did not rigidly dictate the ordering and functioning of Izmir’s society.

Kasaba claims that the sharp deterioration of this coexistence was due to ideological currents and political actions: Greek and Turkish nationalisms and the forceful displacement and disentangling of diverse local populations in Anatolia. The Greek invasion sought to reorder Izmir in black-and-white terms, in accordance to a nationalist agenda to a yet greater extent than the Young Turks had imagined. Categories were violently set in stone through a misguided policy, as Kasaba calls it⁴², of Hellenization and demographic manipulation. Again, as Georgelin points out, the ideological conflicts were imported to Izmir by foreign elements: the Greek army was composed mostly of mainland Greeks and the Turkish independence army, mostly of predominantly Muslim ‘Turkoman’ inland Anatolians⁴³. Izmir is set on fire in this rip tide landscape of polarized identities.

The fire takes hold of the Izmir, ending an era, 1922.

The Levantine community finds itself in the midst of such titanic movements, finding refuge in ancient genealogical ties to European homelands. Yet, it can no longer fit in the national models of identity set in place. The Levantin, over the course of his existence in Izmir, appropriates modes and mores from what has become a home city. The community concedes its European lineage through commercially advantageous alliances with local Christian Armenians and Greeks: it is defined by its heterogeneous mix. Moreover, even among European settlers, a cultural proximity unites British, French, Dutch, Italian forming hybrid generations who have no other home than Izmir. Goffman understands this nuance: “individuals within these groups no longer envisioned themselves as citizens of a city (Izmir) or of a region and subjects of a state (the Ottoman Empire); they now conceived themselves as citizens of one of several mutually exclusive and intensely hostile nationalities.”⁴⁴ In order to navigate through the sectarian politics and institutions of the 19^th century, it demarcates itself as belonging to a “colony” and a class thus preserving an advantageous status. The historical identity of the Levantine community is as a result defined by a resourceful approach; it deals with its identity according to the winds of society and manages to profit from the opportunities such a polychromatic identity can offer. Georgelin’s conclusion on the subject makes a to-the-point assessment: “ le cosmopolitisme levantin est ainsi fait de tensions, meme si certains auteurs eprouvent un malaise face a cette realite sociale.”⁴⁵

My grandfather, Jak Edizel, recorded the memories of his life on tapes and one of them is entitled the Fire of Izmir. His account is vivid and non-linear, which gives a rounded sense of what he was experiencing, starting with details he could first remember, like where he used to live, and adding layers richly anecdotal each time he would start a new thread.

His family, of alleged Armenian, Austro-Slovenian and Italian origins, used to live in the Greek quarters close to an abandoned Greek girls lyceum and a Belgian pavilion. He remembers that the kids of the neighbourhood would go play in the building after school because it had spacious rooms, no doors and no windows. People would speak Greek to each other in the street, whether Christian or not. Yet the language spoken at home depended on which schools the family attended and which consulate protected it. Jak recalls that he would sit at a panoramic spot near his house to watch Izmir’s bay, filled with American, British, Greek and Italian war boats. The presence of the Allied forces was very much felt during Izmir’s Greek occupation. On the eve of the fire, Jak, a 9 year old boy at the time, senses an agitation in the Greeks of Izmir; there were rumours of the Turkish army approaching Izmir. Greeks soldiers were selling their horses for 20 piastres⁴⁶ in order to leave the country as quickly as they could through Çesme, a small port adjacent to Chios. As the Greeks disband from Izmir, sporadic lawlessness sets upon the city. Any bandit with all to gain from such an instable situation took advantage to steal and vandalise. Many Turks, embittered by the Greek occupation, found it an opportune moment for public unrest. “If you spoke any other language than Turkish”, he said “they would cut your head off”. To escape this uprising, Jak’s family sought refuge in an Italian missionary school with many other French and Italian speaking people. The school was protected by Italian soldiers.

When the fire was first declared in the Armenian and Greek quarters, the city mood went from sporadic neighbourhood unrest to a shrill panic that swarmed into the quays from the suburbs of Bornova in search for an escape aboard European or Greek vessels. Women, children, elderly people, men… All huddled in barques to reach the war boats anchored in the bay. “C’était la pagaille”⁴⁷ exclaims my grandfather. His family decided however to go to the Halkapınar train station in hopes of catching a train to Bayraklı, a sleepy suburb on the north side of the bay. Aunt Marie’s suburban home would provide a shelter till the end of the fire. Incidentally, they were not the only ones to have had the idea and the crowd they were with was escorted to the station by French soldiers. His family and the many other people that made the crowd were under papal protection as Catholics. At this time, papal protection had been relegated to the French consulate. Once at the train station, they passed Turkish checkpoints. A friend of the family who worked at the train station advised them not to stay at the train station over night, as it was riddled with thieves. They joined a mixed crowd of Greeks and Europeans that was en route to Bayraklı under a Turkish cavalry escort. One of the soldiers took my grandfather on his lap. He reminded him of his father who had gone to war and never had never back. Having reached the safety of Bayraklı, he could see the city engulfed in a yellow blaze on the other side of the bay. The fire lasted a few days and Allied boats stationed in the bay had opened fire onto the city clearing wide spaces in an attempt to control the fire. Alsancak and Konak, respectively the European and Ottoman quarters, were thus protected and still stand to this day.

Additionally to this account of the fire, Jak Edizel provides us with two very symbolic anecdotes that portray the patriotic/ethnic tensions of the time. Sometime during the Greek occupation, the General of the stationed army organizes a grand reception, in which he intends to give a speech. Of course, all well-to-do elements of Izmir’s society (consuls, industrialists, administrative officials and so on) are invited to this lavish soiree. Naturally, the Greek flag is proudly hoisted to welcome the party. A young Jewish journalist present protests and publicly declares: “This land is not yours, it is Turkish. Bring down that flag!” He is arrested at once and executed the next day. Much later, when the moment came for the Turkish soldiers to bring down the Greek flag at Konak Square and hoist their own Crescent and Star, they cannot find one. They start searching for one, asking people in the streets and who else should happen to have one “up her sleeve” than a Jewish woman passing by.

The Levantine identity of Izmir nowadays rests on such memories. Levantine no longer has any political meaning in the actual delineations of the Turkish Republic. It is no longer “imagined” in colonial terms as a denaturalised expatriate, since the political scene of the Mediterranean has shifted to a conglomeration of nation-states each having claimed its territory, independent history and proper identity. All that is left is the way in which members of its still existent community remember themselves. These memories are tainted with obsolete meanings that however very much inform the social mentalities of today’s Izmir. Many families who stayed in Izmir after the fire and contributed to the building of the nation-state sought to redefine their identity, leaving behind an ambivalent and traumatic past. The fire not only motivated such denials but also physically erased many documents that attested official identities and revealed Izmir’s complex identity: birth records, marriage records, commercial records, personal archives. A recently published book Izmir Hayaletleri⁴⁸ by Loren Edizel captures this nostalgic identity by revisiting a fictionalised Izmir through the lenses of a Levantine family. It is one of the first books of its kind to address the fire of Izmir through a literary medium and to reanimate the cosmopolitan setting of a Levantine identity. The themes that animate this identity are deeply informed by a historical consciousness also present in the city’s historiography; displacement, tolerance, rejection, elitism, heterogeneous genealogy and destructive nationalisms all inform the fictional world Loren Edizel designates as Levantine.

Complementarily, my correspondence with Andrew Simes reveals applicable themes: “Being Levantine nowadays is flirting with depression; how can someone long for a time during which they weren’t even alive?”⁴⁹ Nostalgia, once again, colours the identity of the present day Levantin. Simes also reinforces the idea that identity for the Levantine community is also conscious of its historical tensions: a multiplicity of roots is acknowledged, yet at the same time, almost in complete opposition, ethnic and religious differences are assumed. For instance, he calls Izmir a “truly harmonious melting pot” right after describing the heterogeneity of its urban landscape or recalling ancient animosities that divide genealogies. The same instance can be seen in Naaman’s and Ambler’s depiction of the Levantine identity; a singular entity made up of several heterogeneous parts, critically conscious of them in practice yet psychologically prone to promoting cultural boundaries. In this light, as much as it is conscious of its mixed genealogy, it is simultaneously critical and accepting of colonial ethnocentric categories. Yet another tendency that the interview reveals is the denial of this painful and complicated past by assuming monochrome nationalities, in this case, Turkish. National discourse builds from the assumption that identity stems from a deep essence rooted in timeless historical unravellings. Thus, as Andrew Simes concisely points out, some members of the community “name their children names such as Christiano De Angelo, (they) do not take pride in their Italian/French/British nationalities and simply use their passports to travel, and boldly profess that they are Turkish to the core!” The interview also exposes religion still to this day remaining a distinct facet of the Levantine identity. The community lives Christianity within a historical frame that was perpetuated since the Renaissance. Islam is also still conceived through remnants of the past. Such religious tensions, even though far from being as present as they were in pre-Republican Turkey, still exist and shape the present day communities and their sense of identity. Religion, even in the theoretically secular setting of a modern Turkish Republic, remains a cultural marker of difference: “They pride themselves on "laikçilik" yet they cannot conceive how a Turk can be of Christian faith. To them it’s an oxymoron.” Beyond these matters lies the most conclusive one; that of heritage and extinction. The omnipresent sense of nostalgia attached to the Levantine identity has motivated the community to assert itself and claim its important role in Izmir’s history. The dangers of local culture extinction are brought about by institutional culture, which, at this point, is largely oblivious of the implicit complexities of Izmir’s early modern history. Thus, Andrew Simes makes it a point of self-preservation to rally the community behind a sense of historical pride.

The Levantine identity acts as an example, among many, of hybrid identity borne out of the colonial era. It is made up of composite parts, grown from a complex history and trapped between the separate identities from which it builds its own. Yet, unlike national identities, it remains conscious of its regional genealogy. This particularity stems out of social necessity and circumstance, as Izmir’s historiography shows us. Such identities teach us that nationalism proves to be potentially destructive as it assumes a rigid de-historicized frame of reference, a recipe for war and intolerance. Hybrid identities stand to remind us of history’s irreducible complexities, which are begging to be touched upon. No culture can claim unconditional historical territoriality without embracing the mixed temporalities and ethnicities from which it was born. Maalouf’s ideals about identity are thus to be seriously considered in an age where national borders are simultaneously trivialised through international commerce and emphasized through international political discourse.

Notes:
1 The term as used in Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994.

2 Maalouf is a Christian Lebanese French citizen.

3 Identity is not given once and for all, it builds and transforms itself throughout one’s life. Maalouf, Amin, Les identités meurtrières. Paris: editions Grasset, 1998. p 33.

4 Levantine, as will be discussed in cosmopolitan terms.

5 Ambler, Eric, The Levanter. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972. p. 112.

6 Naaman, Abdallah, Les Levantins: une race, essai d’analyse sociale. Beyrouth: Maison Naaman pour la Culture, 1984. p 176.

7 “Cosmopolitanism is a set of projects towards planetary conviviality” Mignolo, Walter D. “The Many Faces of Cosmo-Polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism” in Breckenridge, Carol A. and al. (ed.), Cosmopolitanism. London: Duke University Press, 2002. p. 157.

8 In the 19^th century especially, Greek becomes a lingua franca for Smyrnians. Izmir is also known for the development of fragiochiotiko, the roman script adapted to write in Greek.

9 Goffman, Daniel “Izmir: from village to colonial port” in Eldem, Edhem, The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 92.

10 Goffman, Daniel “Izmir: from village to colonial port” in Eldem, Edhem, The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p.85.

11 Georgelin, Hervé, La fin de Smyrne: du cosmopolitisme aux nationalismes. Paris: CNRS, 2005, p. 32.

12 Note that these titles are given by European travelers. Izmir could only be called the “Perle de l’Orient” because of its western allure.

13 Ibid. p. 43.

14 Izmir the Infidel.

15 Ibid. p. 58.

16 “Toute action pedagogique est objectivement une violence symbolique en tant qu’imposition (…) d’un arbitraire culturel” Ibid. p.98-99, cited from Reproduction, élements d’une théorie d’enseignement, Paris, 1970, p.18.

17 Gunshots open in Izmir’s predominantly European suburb Cordelio between Turkish fanatics and Armenian nationalists. In light of this occurrence, the Austrian consul gives his recommendations to the vali at the time, Kâmil Pasa. Georgelin p. 158.

18 “Etre pro-francais, pro-britannique ou pro-allemand est une opinion politique dans le cadre Ottoman” Ibid. p. 156.

19 “Les projets, arméniens ou grecs par exemple, d’actions revendicaires s’élaborent dans le cadre d’un millet ottoman, que l’on désire promouvoir au rang de nation a l’européene puis d’État-nation” Ibid. p. 164.

20 Ibid. p. 173.

21 Ibid. p. 228.

22 Smyrnelis discusses a concept of a common relational space, but I have decided to omit her discussion as this theme is treated more specifically in Sibel Zandi-Sayek’s article “Orchestrating Difference”.

23 Smyrnelis, Marie Carmen, Une societé hors de soi: identités et relations sociales a Smyrne aux XVIIIe et XIXe siecles. Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2005 p. 40.

24 Intermarriage among Orthodox, Apostolic, Catholic or Protestant Christians was a common practice. Jewish/Christian marriages however could not be officially recognized.

25 Ibid. p. 51-52.

26 The nationality law is put into place January 19th 1869. Ibid. p 77.

27 Ibid. p. 75.

28 Ibid. p. 64.

29 French nationalism in the 19th century broadens its definitions. Smyrnelis uses the following example: the title of expatriated citizenship changes from “d’originaire français” to “Français natif de”. Ibid. p. 66 .

30 To make matters even more complicated: any Ottoman subject who was affiliated to a consulate through work received protection from it. This protection would come under the form of a berat, a permit which had to be paid for to ensure such protection. In the later half of the 19^th century, this system was commonly used by Ottoman citizens who wished to evade the Ottoman jurisdiction. In some cases, these berats could lead to naturalisation, provided a handsome bribe was furnished to the consul. Nationalism, still in its infancy, had not yet closed off such opportunities. Identities were for sale. Ibid. p 82.

31 Ibid. p. 228.

32 Zandi-Sayek, Sibel, “Orchestrating Difference, Performing Identity: Urban Space and Public Rituals in Nineteenth Century Izmir” in alSayyad, Nezar, Hybrid Urbanism, On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, (Westport, 2001) p. 43.

33 Ibid. p.46.

34 Ibid. p.42.

35 Ibid. p.55.

36 Ibid. p.62.

37 Kasaba, Reşat, “Izmir 1922: A Port City Unravels” in Fawaz, Leila and Bayly, Christopher (eds), Modernity and Culture; From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. (New York: Columbia, 2002) p. 207.

38 Ibid. p. 208.

39 Ibid.p 209-10 “The idea that these communities could be easily identified, separated from each other, moved and relocated across long distances contradicted both the actual conditions and the worldviews and expectations of the people who became the subjects of these policies.”

40 Ibid. p. 210.

41 Ibid. p.211-212: To emphasize this point, he provides us with an interesting anecdote: “Even some bands of brigands were multiethnic in composition. One such band captured in 1919 had 21 members: nine Greeks, six Turks, and two Armenians”.

42 Ibid p. 217: “it would not be an exaggeration to claim that the only accomplishment of this profoundly misguided policy was to galvanize the sentiments of exclusion within Turkish nationalism and plant the very seeds of enmity that are often mentioned as the cause of this conflict”.

43 Ibid. p 218-19.

44 Goffman, Daniel “Izmir: from village to colonial port” in Eldem, Edhem, The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 133.

45 Georgelin, Herve, La fin de Smyrne: du cosmopolitisme aux nationalismes. Paris: CNRS, 2005 p. 228.

46 piastres=kuruş, livres=lira - the currency was called this in Turkey at that time, in French.

47 Pagaille: an overwhelming mess.

48 The Ghosts of Smyrna, in its original English manuscript.

49 See appendix for the full length correspondence.

About the Author:

Nikola Haddad-Edizel is a recent graduate from the University of Toronto in Semiotics and Near and Middle Eastern Studies. Born in Montreal, Canada, he has always been in contact with Levantine culture vicariously through his dispersed family, some among them still established in Turkey. From a young age, Nikola showed an interest in history and cultural studies and followed these interests through to university. “A Delve into Displacement” is his first independent study, composed during the final year of his Bachelor. This essay can be seen as an exploration of his family’s identity and of his contact with Diaspora multiculturalism in a metropolitan Canadian setting. Nikola’s current project consists in an 8 month backpack trip through Japan, China, South-East Asia and India in which he will record his experiences in light of his academic baggage and hopefully be inspired to produce many more writings in the field and beyond.
Nikola Haddad-Edizel is the son of the author Loren Edizel, whose interview is online here:
To contact the author for feedback or potential cooperation: nikolahe[at]gmail.com

Appendix

A correspondence with Andrew Simes:

My questions here were formulated in order to reveal present day mentalities and historical perspectives of a Levantine community within a modern Turkish state.

1) What is your definition of Levantine as a community?

Izmir was a city of 9 neighbourhoods. Each neighbourhood housing a certain country’s nationals. An English, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Armenian, Greek, Turkish, and Jewish neighbourhood. Now, imagine taking a stroll through the city. Walking through each neighbourhood, you would hear the language, see the fashion, culture, infrastructure, taste the cuisine of each respective country. A truly harmonious melting pot. Something even the United Nations would envy!

Nowadays, Levantines are loneliest people in the world. Their nearest family member may be in another country, they may speak 4 languages but none as a mother tongue, they may have an English passport, Italian name, speak French at home, and belong to the Greek Orthodox faith and though this may seem as a blessing, it is cause for confusion in the person it pertains to as much as it would to a stranger. Being Levantine nowadays is flirting with depression; how can someone long for a time during which they weren’t even alive?

2) How many “nationalities” do you have? What do you know of your genealogy? How many languages do you speak or know?

a) I have running in my veins: British, Italian, French, Greek, Armenian, and Croatian blood. My grandparents’ last names are Simes (English), Corsini (Italian), Sireilles (French), and Balladur (Armenian). I have British and French nationality and vote regularly in both countries. I could qualify for Italian, however with the standard EU treatment for all member states, I do not see the point.
b) I am fluent in Turkish, have acceptable French, and certain understandings of Italian and Greek. I also took Spanish for 4 years in high school, which was owned by the US Department of Defence. Therefore Spanish was standard curriculum as is in the US.

3) What does Izmir mean to you?

Izmir as would be expected means home. But I feel like I’m walking through a ghost town where I once used to live. Everywhere I go, I see relics and remains belonging to my family, my community, my people and I involuntarily slump into sadness. It is self torture, but I cannot get up and leave. The roots are too deep.

4) What was your main motivation in uniting a Levantine community? To what end?

I am trying to unite the French, Italians, British, Maltese, Greeks, Armenians communities and make them realise that there are not too many of us left. I would like to see this heritage continued. Because, let’s face it, when a Levantine marries a Turk, it’s the end of the line there, especially if the Levantine in question is a girl. Also it is a stand against pressure. We have lived and claimed this city as our home for over 300 years. Most of Izmir’s contemporary population is made up of eastern Anatolian or Balkan Turks who arrived during my lifetime and I feel we are a bigger part of this city that they will ever be. Like Black heritage month in the United States, its an effort of self-preservation from inner and outer threats. But one can also resemble it to Custer’s last stand.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Edizel, Loren, İzmir Hayaletleri, Izmir: Şenocak Yayınları, 2008.

Memories of Jak Edizel’s Life on Tape, “The Fire of Izmir” 1993.

Interview with Andrew Simes.

Secondary Sources

Identity:

Anderson, Benedict R O’G, Imagined Communities: reflection on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.

Naaman, Abdallah, Les Levantins: une race, essai d’analyse sociale. Beyrouth: Maison Naaman pour la Culture, 1984.

Ambler, Eric, The Levanter. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972.

Maalouf, Amin, Les identités meurtrières. Paris: editions Grasset, 1998.

Bhabha, Homi K., The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994.

Mignolo, Walter D. “The Many Faces of Cosmo-Polis: Border Thinking and Critical Cosmopolitanism” in Breckenridge, Carol A. and al. (eds.), Cosmopolitanism. London: Duke University Press, 2002. 157-186.

Izmir’s Historiography:

Driessen, Henk, “Mediterranean Port Cities: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered”, History and Anthropology 16 (2005), 129-41.

Goffman, Daniel “Izmir: from village to colonial port” in Eldem, Edhem, The Ottoman City between East and West: Aleppo, Izmir and Istanbul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Kasaba, Reşat, “Izmir 1922: A Port City Unravels” in Fawaz, Leila and Bayly, Christopher (eds), Modernity and Culture; From the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. (New York: Columbia, 2002) 204-29.

Smyrnelis, Marie Carmen, Une societe hors de soi: identites et relations sociales a Smyrne aux XVIIIe et XIXe siecles. Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2005.

Georgelin, Herve, La fin de Smyrne: du cosmopolitisme aux nationalismes. Paris: CNRS, 2005.

Zandi-Sayek, Sibel, “Orchestrating Difference, Performing Identity: Urban Space and Public Rituals in Nineteenth Century Izmir” in alSayyad, Nezar, Hybrid Urbanism, On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, (Westport, 2001) 42-66.

submission date 2009