1934 Turkish Resettlement Law

The 1934 Resettlement Law (also known as the Law no. 2510) was a policy adopted on 14 June 1934 by the Turkish government which set forth the basic principles of immigration.[1] The law however is regarded in academia as a policy of forceful assimilation of non-Turkish minorities through a forced and collective resettlement.[2]

Background

The bill was passed by the Turkish National Assembly on 14 June 1934. The law was made public and put into effect after it was published in the Resmi Gazete a week after its promulgation.[2] According to the Interior Minister Şükrü Kaya:[3]

“ This law will create a country speaking with one language, thinking in the same way and sharing the same sentiment. ”

Taking into consideration security and political concerns, the law closed strategic regions of the country to non-Muslim minority settlement.[4] Turkish politicians understood that many non-Turks had been resettled on their own into separate villages and therefore had not assimilated into Turkishness.[5] Those individuals who "spoke alien dialects" had been able to differentiate themselves from the Turkish nation. It was a necessity to assess those villages in which such "alien dialects" were spoken and to distribute populations which spoke the "alien dialects" to nearby Turkish villages in order to foster and encourage forced assimilation.[5]

Under Article I of the law, the Minister of Interior was granted the right to govern and redistribute the interior population of the country in accordance to an individuals adherence to Turkish culture.[6] Article 11 was a provision regarding that the resettlement must assure 'unity in language, culture and blood'.[7]

The settlement zones were divided in three separate zones according to the adherence of Turkish culture in the each particular individual:[8]

In paragraph Four of Article 10, the Ministry of Interior was granted the authority to transfer any individual who did not possess a certain degree of "Turkish culture" to Zone 2, where forced assimilatory practices would take place.[9]

According to Article 12, those individuals who did not speak Turkish and were in Zone 1 and were not transferred Zone 2 must be settled in villages, towns, and districts that had a preexisting dominance of Turkish culture in order to foster assimilation.[9]

The law also required the resettlement of Muslim minorities such as Circassians, Albanians, and Abkhazes who were considered Muslims who had failed to fully adhere to the Turkish nation.[10] Although these minorities shared the same faith as their Turkish counterparts, it was still considered a goal by the politicians of the Turkish Republic to bind all peoples of Turkey to become Turkish.[11]

Thracian events

Although the Law on Settlement was expected to operate as an instrument for Turkifying the mass of non-Turkish speaking citizens, it immediately emerged as a piece of legislation which sparked riots by non-Muslims, as evidenced in the 1934 Thrace pogroms in the immediate aftermath of the law’s passage. Law No. 2510 was issued on 14 June 1934, and the Thrace pogroms began just over a fortnight later, on 3 July. The incidents seeking to force out the region’s non-Muslim residents first began in Çanakkale, where Jews received unsigned letters telling them to leave the city, and then escalated into an antisemitic campaign involving economic boycotts and verbal assaults as well as physical violence against the Jews living in the various provinces of Thrace.[12] It is estimated that out of a total 15,000-20,000 Jews living in the region, more than half fled to Istanbul during and after the incidents.[13] However, although the Law on Settlement may well have actually provoked the incidents’ outbreak, the national authorities did not side with the attackers but immediately intervened in the incidents. After order was restored, the governors and mayors of the provinces involved were removed from office.[14]

Dersim Rebellion

Main article: Dersim rebellion

The law played a major role in the events in Dersim in 1938 known as the Dersim rebellion. It involved the depopulation of Tunceli in Eastern Turkey in 1937-1938, where, according to McDowall, 40,000 people were killed, although historians suggest that this figure may be exaggerated.[15] In seventeen days of the 1938 offensive alone, 7,954 persons were reported killed or caught alive.[16] According to official Turkish reports, almost 10 percent of the entire population of Tunceli was killed.[16] The Kurds claim that their losses were even higher.

The 1934 Turkish Resettlement Law was the legal justification used for the forced resettlement. It was used primarily to target the region of Dersim as one of its first test cases, which left disastrous consequences for the local population.[17]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Cagatay, Soner 2002 ‘Kemalist donemde goc ve iskan politikaları: Turk kimligi uzerine bir calısma (Policies of migration and settlement in the Kemalist era: a study on Turkish identity), Toplum ve Bilim, no. 93, pp. 218-41.
  2. 1 2 Jongerden, Joost (2007). The settlement issue in Turkey and the Kurds : an analysis of spatial policies, modernity and war ([Online-Ausg.] ed.). Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 9789004155572.
  3. ↑ TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, Devre: IV, Cilt: 23, İçtima: 3, 14/06/1934, p.71.
  4. ↑ Icduygu, A., Toktas, S., & Soner, B. A. (2008). The politics of population in a nation-building process: Emigration of non-Muslims from turkey. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(2), 358-389. doi:10.1080/01419870701491937
  5. 1 2 Bayrak, Mehmet (1992). Kürtler ve ulusal-demokratik mücadeleleri üstüne : gizli belgeler, arastırmalar, notlar (in Turkish) (1. baskı ed.). Ankara: Özge. p. 508. ISBN 9789757861010.
  6. ↑ ‘İskan Kanunu’, no: 2510, 14/06/1934, Düstur, Tertip: 3, Cilt: 15, p. 1156.
  7. ↑ 1/335 Numaralı İskan Kanunu Layihası ve İskan Muvakkat Encümeni Mazbatası’ In TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, Devre: IV, Cilt: 3, Ek: 189, 02/05/1932, p. 11.
  8. ↑ İskan Kanunu’, no: 2510, 14/06/1934, Düstur, Tertip: 3, Cilt: 15, p. 1156.
  9. 1 2 İskan Kanunu’, no: 2510, 14/06/1934, Düstur, Tertip: 3, Cilt: 15, pp. 1158-1160.
  10. ↑ Gülalp, Haldun (2009). Citizenship and Ethnic Conflict: Challenging the nation-state. Routledge. ISBN 9781134203819.
  11. ↑ TBMM Zabit Ceridesi, Session IV, vol. 23, addenda 189, p. 6.
  12. ↑ Levi, Avner. 1998. Turkiye Cumhuriyetinde Yahudiler (Jews in the Republic of Turkey), Istanbul: Iletisim Yayınları
  13. ↑ Karabatak, Haluk 1996 ‘Turkiye azınlık tarihine bir katkı: 1934 Trakya olayları ve Yahudiler’ (A contribution to the history of minorities in Turkey: the 1934 Thracian affair and the Jews), Tarih ve Toplum, vol. 146, pp. 68-80.
  14. ↑ Toprak, Zafer. 1996 ‘1934 Trakya olaylarında hukumetin ve CHP’in sorumlulugu (Government responsibility and the RPP in the 1934 Thracian incidents), Toplumsal Tarih, vol. 34, pp. 19-25.
  15. ↑ David McDowall, A modern history of the Kurds, I. B. Tauris, 2002, ISBN 978-1-85043-416-0, p. 209.
  16. 1 2 The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937-38); p. 4
  17. ↑ George J. Andreopoulos (1997). Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. University of Pennsylvania Press. p. 11. ISBN 0-8122-1616-4.

External links

Turkish Government Sources

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