Abstract
In Balkan countries, the term “Ottoman heritage” evokes a contradictory set of perceptions, between awareness of a common cultural landscape and rejection or suspicion of remnants of the “Turkish yoke”. This chapter questions this ambivalence by focusing on Mustapha Kemal Atatürk’s places of memory in Thessaloniki, Greece, and Bitola, Republic of Macedonia. Part of wider spaces and territories, scales and stakes, Atatürk’s places of memory in the Balkans question ways of coping with a past—and heritages—at once shared and contested, at the crossroads of post-Ottoman cultural policies, urban renewal and regional development.
Translation: Jenny Money
The translation of this text was generously financed by TELEMME (UMR 7303), Maison méditerranéenne des sciences de l’Homme, Aix-en-Provence (France).
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Notes
- 1.
Possibly leading to the political deve lopment of “regional nationalisms” (Tétart 2010).
- 2.
Several fieldwork studies have been conducted since 2011 in Thessaloniki and Bitola on the issues developed here, including cultural cross-border cooperation (Givre and Sintès 2015), urban cultural policies (Sintès and Givre 2015), recurrent observations and documentation on the two sites and other post(ottoman) heritage items.
- 3.
As the Renaissance style which, though referring to the fifteenth-century Italian or French Renaissance in Europe, is associated with the ‘national awakenings’ of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries: for example, the Bulgarian term Vâzraždane refers to a collection of cultural and architectural traits deemed typically Bulgarian (Marinov 2010), even if it is often challenging to specify such national contributions in the pan-Balkan (and Ottoman) collective (Lory 1985).
- 4.
Concerning religious heritage, the reassignment and multiple uses of places of worship (notably churches and mosques) constitute a classic expression of the multireligious fabric of the Balkans (Lory 2015), either visible in the landscape or deliberately abandoned. To take one striking example, the minaret on the rotunda of Aghios Georgios in Thessaloniki is both very visible and mostly left to crumble.
- 5.
Even within the same town, as in Thessaloniki , where the situation of many Ottoman buildings along the Via Egnatia (Haman Bey, Yeni Hamam, Hamza Bey mosque), regularly converted, disused or awaiting restoration, contrasts with that of the White Tower, the Dönmeh’s (or Ma’min’s) Yeni Tzami (Mazower 2004: 75–79), or a number of administrative buildings (old customs houses and port offices, the old military school now the Philosophy Department at the unive rsity, etc.), more easily reinvested in than religious spaces.
- 6.
A lieu particulier dans l’affect turc (Copeaux 1997: 278–286).
- 7.
The douleur des membres fantômes (Vaner 2005: 39–60).
- 8.
Following the famous expression coined by Pierre Nora.
- 9.
If his exact date of birth is still not known, official historiography has fixed it symbolically as 19 May, in reference to the date of the outbreak of the Turkish War of Independence (19 May 1919).
- 10.
In 1933, a memorial plaque in Turkish, Greek and French—still visible today—was installed by the municipal council: ‘C’est ici que vit le jour Gazi Moustafa Kemal, le grand rénovateur de la nation turque et champion de l’union balcanique [sic]. Cette plaque a été placée à l’occasion du 10ème anniversaire de la République turque. Salonique, le 29 octobre 1933.’
- 11.
Notably the Bilgili group: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ataturks-house-museum-to-open.aspx?pageID=238&nid=52152.
- 12.
The same year, a replica of the house was built in Ankara .
- 13.
Through his father, Atatürk descended from a Turkoman family established in Macedonia since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. His mother belonged to an old family from Langada, a village to the north of Thessaloniki.
- 14.
It was on his return to Thessaloniki in 1907 that Mustapha Kemal joined the Committee of Union and Progress, an especially active offshoot in Macedonia of the Young Turk Revolution, of which he would become one of the spearheads.
- 15.
Other authors also underlined the role of his wife and his several (adopted) children in the edification of the image of the “Father of Turks” (Calistar 2013).
- 16.
These years in Bitola are described as being fundamental to the intellectual personality of Atatürk, through the discovery of literature and poetry, and of many European (especially French) writers and thinkers from the Age of Enlightenment, deeply influencing his “modernist” political thinking.
- 17.
This museum is run by the Institute for Preservation of Monuments of Culture, Museum Bitola, which was raised to the level of national institution from 2003 for promoting “the protection, systematization, scientific processing and presentation of the cultural legacy of municipality of Bitola” (see http://www.muzejbitola.mk).
- 18.
As explained by a plaque, “The statue of “Mustafa Kemal, cadet at the Manastir Military High School” has been presented to the “Atatürk commemorative room” at the Bitola museum by the General Staff of the Republic of Turkiye. March 13th 2011.”
- 19.
“The renovation and refurbishment of the military school building, front facade, entrance, ground and the first floor museum administrative departments and memorial chamber of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was realised by the Prime Ministry of Republic of Turkey and the Presidency of Turkish Cooperation Coordination Agency—TI KA, May 2013.”
- 20.
A transit tourism owing to the absence of Turkish-speaking guides in Bitola (compared with Skopje, where a large part of the Macedonian Turkish community lives) and to the fact that these Turkish tour operators often work directly with agencies in the capital.
- 21.
The house of this first love is still visible on the main street of Bitola. Similar sentimental stories are to be found in Bulgaria. Displaying the image of a seducer, familiar with the jet set and Balkan bourgeoisies, regardless of religious or national belongings, they stress the cosmopolitan, modern and progressive atmosphere in which Mustafa Kemal lived during his youth, and its influence on his political work. Özyürek underlines how “mundane” representations of Atatürk wearing a dinner jacket, dancing or drinking alcohol have been reappropriated as symbols of a Turkish modernity now challenged by faith- (Muslim-)based values and norms (Özyürek 2006: 93–124).
- 22.
Apart from the restoration of the house of Ali Rıza—father of Kemal—in the village of Kodžadžik (near Debar/Dibër) initiated in 2009, TIK A was still supervising the restoration of ten mosques in the country in 2015. http://www.tika.gov.tr/tr/haber/tika_makedonya_da_489_projeyi_hayata_gecirdi-20927.
- 23.
The term “Herotopia” follows Foucault’s definition for sites “actually localisable”, which are simultaneously mythic and real, and undoes in a way the “usual order of space” (Foucault 1997). This is the case for this room of the Museum of Bitola which has no direct relation with the space of the surrounding society: it is organised by distant players, acting for their own agenda, and displaying a set of representations that connect this place with a bigger network of places and images. On the other hand, it actually works together with certain layers of Macedonian society or history being physically present in this city.
- 24.
The renovation of the house of Atatürk’s father in the village of Kodžadžik (see note 23) is based on a similar logic.
- 25.
This issue even became a bargaining tool between the two countries, since President Erdoğan balanced the reopening of the Orthodox cemetery in Halki, near Istanbul, with the development of a Musl im place of worship in Thessaloniki . http://www.ekathimerini.com/196767/article/ekathimerini/news/erdogan-says-greek-mosque-would-lead-to-halki-opening.
- 26.
I Kathimerini, ‘Plan for a Museum of Islamic Art’, 25 July 2014.
- 27.
On 5 September 1955 a bomb exploded near the consulate, damaging the house and contributing to the outbreak of the “Istanbul pogrom”—violent anti-Greek riots on 6 and 7 September 1955 (even if this attack had in fact been organised by the Turkish secret services). In April 2015 the building was attacked with Molotov cocktails, this time by activists protesting against the European Union’s management of the migration situation in the region and the Turkish government’s execution of it.
- 28.
I Kathimerini, 2 April 2013.
- 29.
http://www.iefimerida.gr/news/165108/απόβαση-των-τούρκων-στη-θεσσαλονίκη-πόλος-έλξης-το-σπίτι-του-κεμάλ-το-γενί-τζαμί-και-ο-μ: “Απόβαση των Τούρκων στη Θεσσαλονίκη -Πόλος έλξης το σπίτι του Κεμάλ, το Γενί Τζαμί και ο… Μπουτάρης”, 30 July 2014.
- 30.
Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation—Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity.
- 31.
The ruling power in the Republic of Macedonia has distinguished itself in recent years through its setting in motion of the huge urban renewal scheme, “Skopje 2014”, which led to the erection of a number of monuments in the town centre, among which are imposing statues representing different figures of the national narrative now promoted in the country. That of Alexander the Great (nearly 25 m high) provoked the anger of the Greek diplomatic corps, which saw it as an attempt to claim once again this controversial historic symbol. Such a project has also been put forward as a way of repositioning the Macedonian capital city in terms of international visibility and competitiveness, the process of “nation branding” being seen as ideologically sound but also economically efficient (Graan 2013).
- 32.
The Telegraph, “Yiannis Boutaris: Greece’s Vision of Hope”, 19 April 2013.
- 33.
L’Obs, « Yiannis Boutaris, le Grec qui plait aux Allemands », 16 June 2014. http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/economie/la-crise-grecque/20120616.OBS8853/yiannis-boutaris-le-grec-qui-plait-aux-allemands.html.
- 34.
GRReporter, « Turkish Tourists Conquer Thessaloniki », 30 July 2014 http://www.grreporter.info/en/turkish_tourists_conquer_thessaloniki/11501.
- 35.
While having no national political or economic function (with the exception of a Ministry for Northern Greece, abolished by the Syriza government).
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Givre, O., Sintès, P. (2018). Post-Ottoman Heritage(s), “Kemalist” Tourism and Cultural Policies in the Balkans. In: Girard, M., Polo, JF., Scalbert-Yücel, C. (eds) Turkish Cultural Policies in a Global World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63658-0_3
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