Those Who Remained Inside the Real ‘Club’: The Precarious Armenian Citizens of the Early Turkish Republican Years

Researching nationalist state policies and their impact on the Armenian community in Istanbul, I began with a collection of Armenian and Ottoman Turkish newspapers published between 1923 and 1930. My aim was to understand this post-genocide period, neglected by previous history writers, whether Turkish or Armenian. (Two important exceptions are Lerna Ekmekçioglu and Talin Suciyan.) As I read my sources, I realized how far we are from understanding the fate of the Armenian community in Turkey. Discriminatory and violent episodes occurred well before the 1942 Wealth Tax Law and the September 1955 pogrom, featured in “The Club.” These too deserve to be brought to light.

The Discriminatory Travel Ban

One episode that significantly affected the life of the Armenian community in Istanbul was the discriminatory travel ban imposed by state authorities on the Armenians. In 1925, no Armenian from Istanbul was allowed to travel outside the city limits. Similarly, Armenians were prohibited from travelling to Istanbul from Anatolia. Although members of the Armenian community were Turkish citizens and entitled to equal rights (in accordance with the Republic’s constitution and the provisions of the Treaty of Lausanne), the travel ban was applied only to Turkish citizens of Armenian origin. Turkish Muslim citizens were left free to travel at will. In January 1925, a Zhamanag (Armenian newspaper) reporter told how Armenian merchants were stranded in Istanbul, banned from returning to their hometown of Catalca, a little over 30 miles to the west (Zhamanag, January 12, 1925, No. 5211).

Government authorities implemented the travel ban, allowing few Armenians to travel to Anatolia. A nation-wide shortage of qualified workers and construction experts led to a minor exemption in Anatolia (Marmara, December 26, 1924, No. 53). The state was willing to permit movement where it profited the state, a kind of commodification of these (implicitly) second-class citizens who were the members of an already traumatized post-genocide community. The initial promise from the newly-established Republican regime was to create a Turkish nation based on civic principles, where all the citizens would be equal regardless of their ethnic and religious background. The travel ban imposed on Armenians contrasts with the civic definitions of Turkish nationalism presented by the Republican authorities.

Education and Language Policies

Alongside restrictions affecting travel and trade, the new Republican government also targeted education. There were tens of educational institutions in Istanbul belonging to the non-Muslim communities in the 1920s. Policymakers believed the Turkification process should begin by nationalizing the curriculum of these schools. They introduced new regulations. Increasing Turkish language, history, and culture classes for minority students was a key objective. Correspondingly, native language classes were decreased. Officials exerted further pressure by increasing Turkish teachers’ salaries, paid by these schools themselves, and forcing non-Muslim teachers in these schools to resign on the basis that they lacked necessary Turkish language knowledge.