türkçe links to original Turkish article
(Milliyet Newspaper, 16 August 2020)
The first Ottoman 'migrants' on German territory were the 500 who
were taken prisoner during the Second Siege of Vienna (1683). It
was, of course, a forced migration that resulted in a change of religion
and Germanization for the 'migrants'. Some of them even became
priests and others grew grapes and made wine.
I (Menderes Özel of Milliyet) learned about another forced migration
that occurred during World War I from the article 'Mavi Kep ve Pelerin'
(Blue Cap and Cape) by Nazan Maksudyan that was published in
'Toplumsal Tarih' (Community History) in March 2014. Herewith a
summary of Maksudyan's writing:
Thousands of Ottoman children were left fatherless in the wake of the
unending wars prior to and including World War I. The number of
orphans in 'Darüleytamlar' (state home for orphans) exceeded 10,000
and the cost of their upkeep increased daily. But Enver Paşa (Ottoman
leader) had a plan to send 5-10,000 orphans to Germany to work in the
mines there, or to learn a trade or to farm.
DVT meeting in Istanbul in April 1917.
The Deutsch-Türkische Vereinigung (DTV, German-Turkish Association)
was eager to bring Enver Paşa's plan to reality. The German Foreign
Ministry, though, was less gung-ho and decided to first bring a few
hundred Ottoman orphans to German as a trial balloon. So the German
Trade and Industry Hearth determined where to place the children and
what craft they should learn. In this initial phase, 314 orphans, aged 14-
16, volunteered and were sent to Germany from Istanbul orphanages.
The orphans left Sirkeci train station at the end of April 1917, arrived
in Berlin 10 days later and were brought before Tahir Bey of the Ottoman
Embassy. Each boy was given a blue cap and cape. A photo of the boys
in the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper (above top) reflected the differing
ethnic roots of the orphans: Armenians, Jews, Anatolians, Arabs and
blacks. They were sent to various cities by DTV to work for craft-masters.
A second group of 200 Ottoman orphans was gathered from Anatolian
orphanages, sent to Berlin by train and packed off to mining regions of
Germany to work in iron, zinc, lead and coal mines. Another 500 orphans
from Anatolia were sent to work on farms in Germany but when German
officials scrutinized the list they saw that only 100 of the boys came from
rural, farming areas and demanded that the list be revised by the Turks.
//END of PART I//
Hiç yorum yok:
Yorum Gönder