I completed my undergraduate studies at the History Department of Middle East Technical University, Ankara. In 2009, I earned an M.A. degree from the History Department at Sabancı University (Istanbul), where I worked as a teaching assistant at the same time. I wrote my PhD dissertation at the History Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London in 2016. My doctoral thesis, focusing on coexistence practices and ethnic cleansing in Western Anatolia during the period of 1912-1923, was published by Edinburgh University Press as part of the Series on the Ottoman Empire, under the title Ethnic Cleansing in Western Anatolia, 1912-1923: Ottoman Officials and the Local Christian Population.
I served my time as a visiting researcher at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in 2018, 2022, and 2023. My articles addressing ethno-religious pluralism in late Ottoman cities, political violence in the late Ottoman period, and lost homelands in narratives after the Asia Minor Catastrophe have been published by Diyâr: Zeitschrift für Osmanistik, Türkei- und Nahostforschung, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. My research interests include identities in the Balkan Peninsula and Turkey; nation-building and minorities; forced migration and state-sponsored violence; ethnic cleansing and genocide in 20th-century Europe; post-catastrophe narratives; and history of the Eastern Orthodox Churches in the Late Ottoman and Early Republican periods.
Address: High Wycombe, England, United Kingdom
I served my time as a visiting researcher at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in 2018, 2022, and 2023. My articles addressing ethno-religious pluralism in late Ottoman cities, political violence in the late Ottoman period, and lost homelands in narratives after the Asia Minor Catastrophe have been published by Diyâr: Zeitschrift für Osmanistik, Türkei- und Nahostforschung, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, and British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. My research interests include identities in the Balkan Peninsula and Turkey; nation-building and minorities; forced migration and state-sponsored violence; ethnic cleansing and genocide in 20th-century Europe; post-catastrophe narratives; and history of the Eastern Orthodox Churches in the Late Ottoman and Early Republican periods.
Address: High Wycombe, England, United Kingdom
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Journal Articles by Umit Eser
Free e-print: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KI88HVMFNTGZZFDEWMMN/full?target=10.1080/13530194.2024.2313756
Books by Umit Eser
Edited by Axel B. Corlu
Caglar Keyder
Funda Aditatar
Frank Castiglione
Umit Eser
Vjeran Kursar
Anna Lia Proietti Ergun
Luca Orlandi
Aysin Sisman
Alyson Wharton-Durgaryan
Carole Woodall
Book Chapters by Umit Eser
Conference Presentations by Umit Eser
Nonetheless, the Convention of Settlement, Commerce, and Navigation in 1930, a treaty between Greece and Turkey, provided that the Greek and Turkish citizens could enter and settle in the respective territories without limitations. As this convention permitted only the individual settlements of persons, some Smyrniote Greeks, including Giorgos Tzavelopoulos, Olga Vatidou, and Giorgos Seferis, could visit their burned and ethnically-cleansed homeland, and commit their memoirs to paper in the 1930s and 1940s. After presenting a brief account of those travels, this paper will focus on their experiences and perceptions about ‘new and wholly Turkish Izmir’ and its inhabitants—migrant and resident Muslims, and a very limited number of remaining Christians. Following that, I will try to discuss how those ex-Smyrniotes remembered the Ottoman cosmopolitanism vanished in the autumn of 1922, and compared the imperial past of cosmopolitan Smyrna and the early republican city of Turkified Izmir. What is excluded from the national identity of the republic—presence of the Christians—returns, again and again, through these visits to haunt the contours of the national identity of the young republic.
Following the unilateral promulgation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in May 1872, Greek and Bulgarian national identities, which were rival to each other, started to be constructed by the nationalist intelligentsias. Nonetheless, both Slavic-speaking and Greek-speaking Orthodox communities in the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia employed pre-national identity categories, such as “Christians” (Χριστιανοί), “Rums”(Ῥωμαῖοι), “Kariots” (Καραιτοι/ Καριωτοι), or “Grecomans” (Γραικομάνοι), interchangeably, to identify themselves even after the establishment of the Bulgarian Principality and autonomy of Eastern Rumelia, both under Ottoman suzerainty, in 1878. For example, the mercantile communities in the towns considered themselves as 'Ρομαιοι' (Rhomaioi/Rums) and their towns as 'Ρομαιων κατοικια' (Rhomaion katoikia/Rum residence). The peasants preferred the term “Christian” in the radicalized atmosphere of the Patriarchist-Exarchist confrontation. These people regarded themselves neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but heirs of the Roman Empire; and Orthodox Christianity played an important role in their identity-formation. These patterns of identification persisted among the Orthodox communities, though Eastern Rumelia was united with the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885. Nonetheless, Bulgarian nationalist discourse targeted the use of Greek language and anti-Greek outbursts terrorized towns and villages in the 1906-07, shortly before the declaration of Bulgarian independence.
In the first decade of the 20th century, Aram Hamparzum (alias Kamparsomian), an Ottoman Armenian, who was a fig merchant, appeared as the rival of “Smyrna Fig Packers” Ltd., a British firm. Despite he ceded his business to the British company by contract in 1911, he continued to work figs on his own account in opposition to the company, with the encouragement of Rahmî Bey. When the war broke out in 1914, Hamparzum, aided by H. Giraud, also a Levantine merchant, created fictitious boom on the market through selling their shares in the company. Contrary to traditional historiography of the Ottoman economy, Hamparzum case reveals that non-Muslim Ottoman merchants found themselves more often in direct competition than in co-operation with European merchants thanks to their social and commercial networks. His case shows that non-Muslim merchants continued to dominate the local market in the temporary safe haven of Smyrna, though the Central Office of the CUP employed economic measures to liquidate the non-Muslim bourgeoisie, and the Armenians were sent to the brutal death marches toward the Syrian Desert in the spring of 1915.
A great number of the Ottoman Christians had already fled to Greece during the violent events and the Great Fire of Smyrna in September 1922; however, the properties of the Christian communities constituted a problem in the minds of the local Kemalist authorities. Therefore, systematic destruction and definite defunctionalisation of the Orthodox and Armenian churches continued in the winter of 1922-23 till the signature of the convention of the population exchange.
Some church buildings were able to stand due to their location outside the fire zone.
Saint John the Theologian (Agios Ioannis tou Theologou) Church, one of such churches located in the Upper Neighbourhood (Apano Mahala), would be sequestered by the Commission of the Abandoned Properties (Emvâl-i Metruke Komisyonu) immediately after the fire. At the end of a series of long correspondence between the ministries and municipality, it was decided that the bell tower of the church would be destroyed and the furniture and icons would be returned to Greece, while the remaining parts of the building would be converted to a school in 1938.
Interviews by Umit Eser
More info: http://www.levantineheritage.com/interview15.html
Seminars by Umit Eser
Talks by Umit Eser
Projects by Umit Eser
Papers by Umit Eser
Free e-print: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/KI88HVMFNTGZZFDEWMMN/full?target=10.1080/13530194.2024.2313756
Edited by Axel B. Corlu
Caglar Keyder
Funda Aditatar
Frank Castiglione
Umit Eser
Vjeran Kursar
Anna Lia Proietti Ergun
Luca Orlandi
Aysin Sisman
Alyson Wharton-Durgaryan
Carole Woodall
Nonetheless, the Convention of Settlement, Commerce, and Navigation in 1930, a treaty between Greece and Turkey, provided that the Greek and Turkish citizens could enter and settle in the respective territories without limitations. As this convention permitted only the individual settlements of persons, some Smyrniote Greeks, including Giorgos Tzavelopoulos, Olga Vatidou, and Giorgos Seferis, could visit their burned and ethnically-cleansed homeland, and commit their memoirs to paper in the 1930s and 1940s. After presenting a brief account of those travels, this paper will focus on their experiences and perceptions about ‘new and wholly Turkish Izmir’ and its inhabitants—migrant and resident Muslims, and a very limited number of remaining Christians. Following that, I will try to discuss how those ex-Smyrniotes remembered the Ottoman cosmopolitanism vanished in the autumn of 1922, and compared the imperial past of cosmopolitan Smyrna and the early republican city of Turkified Izmir. What is excluded from the national identity of the republic—presence of the Christians—returns, again and again, through these visits to haunt the contours of the national identity of the young republic.
Following the unilateral promulgation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in May 1872, Greek and Bulgarian national identities, which were rival to each other, started to be constructed by the nationalist intelligentsias. Nonetheless, both Slavic-speaking and Greek-speaking Orthodox communities in the autonomous province of Eastern Rumelia employed pre-national identity categories, such as “Christians” (Χριστιανοί), “Rums”(Ῥωμαῖοι), “Kariots” (Καραιτοι/ Καριωτοι), or “Grecomans” (Γραικομάνοι), interchangeably, to identify themselves even after the establishment of the Bulgarian Principality and autonomy of Eastern Rumelia, both under Ottoman suzerainty, in 1878. For example, the mercantile communities in the towns considered themselves as 'Ρομαιοι' (Rhomaioi/Rums) and their towns as 'Ρομαιων κατοικια' (Rhomaion katoikia/Rum residence). The peasants preferred the term “Christian” in the radicalized atmosphere of the Patriarchist-Exarchist confrontation. These people regarded themselves neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but heirs of the Roman Empire; and Orthodox Christianity played an important role in their identity-formation. These patterns of identification persisted among the Orthodox communities, though Eastern Rumelia was united with the Principality of Bulgaria in 1885. Nonetheless, Bulgarian nationalist discourse targeted the use of Greek language and anti-Greek outbursts terrorized towns and villages in the 1906-07, shortly before the declaration of Bulgarian independence.
In the first decade of the 20th century, Aram Hamparzum (alias Kamparsomian), an Ottoman Armenian, who was a fig merchant, appeared as the rival of “Smyrna Fig Packers” Ltd., a British firm. Despite he ceded his business to the British company by contract in 1911, he continued to work figs on his own account in opposition to the company, with the encouragement of Rahmî Bey. When the war broke out in 1914, Hamparzum, aided by H. Giraud, also a Levantine merchant, created fictitious boom on the market through selling their shares in the company. Contrary to traditional historiography of the Ottoman economy, Hamparzum case reveals that non-Muslim Ottoman merchants found themselves more often in direct competition than in co-operation with European merchants thanks to their social and commercial networks. His case shows that non-Muslim merchants continued to dominate the local market in the temporary safe haven of Smyrna, though the Central Office of the CUP employed economic measures to liquidate the non-Muslim bourgeoisie, and the Armenians were sent to the brutal death marches toward the Syrian Desert in the spring of 1915.
A great number of the Ottoman Christians had already fled to Greece during the violent events and the Great Fire of Smyrna in September 1922; however, the properties of the Christian communities constituted a problem in the minds of the local Kemalist authorities. Therefore, systematic destruction and definite defunctionalisation of the Orthodox and Armenian churches continued in the winter of 1922-23 till the signature of the convention of the population exchange.
Some church buildings were able to stand due to their location outside the fire zone.
Saint John the Theologian (Agios Ioannis tou Theologou) Church, one of such churches located in the Upper Neighbourhood (Apano Mahala), would be sequestered by the Commission of the Abandoned Properties (Emvâl-i Metruke Komisyonu) immediately after the fire. At the end of a series of long correspondence between the ministries and municipality, it was decided that the bell tower of the church would be destroyed and the furniture and icons would be returned to Greece, while the remaining parts of the building would be converted to a school in 1938.
More info: http://www.levantineheritage.com/interview15.html