Prospects and challenges: The study of early Turkish immigration to the United States

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 25, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 85-100

  Grabowski, John J ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 52949143270     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (58)

1. Ahmed Emin Yalman, Turkey in My Time (Norman, OK, 1956), 28-31. Yalman studied at Columbia as Ahmet Emin. He adopted the surname Yalman in 1934 when the Republic of Turkey required Turks to adopt legal surnames.
2. See, for example, Andrew Wheatcroft, The Ottomans (London, 1993). Although this is a rather superficial treatment, it does give a sense of the public image of the Turks in the West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
3. See also Mustafa Soyokut, ed., Historical Image of the Turk in Europe: 15th Century to the Present (Istanbul, 2003). Many Americans perhaps had their first "real" encounter with Ottoman Turkey at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair where the Ottoman government sponsored a pavilion.
4. See Gülsen Sevinç, Ay§e Fazlioǧlu, "1893 Şikago Sergisi'nde Osmanlilar," Toplumsal Tarih 92 (August 2001): 6-9, for an article on this.
5. Unfortunately, the official government presentation was challenged by Orientalist "exhibits" on the Midway, the most noted of which was the dancing of "Little Egypt." Interestingly, Yalman also seems to have experienced the Western fascination with the Orient. While a student at Columbia, he visited a Turkish ice cream parlor in Manchester, New Hampshire, and there found the owner and the waiters garbed in fezes and appropriate Eastern attire. Their customers were American. Ahmet Emin Yalman, "Turkish Immigrants in America," University Literature Faculty Magazine, 1918.
6. Yalman's article, originally written in Osmanlica (Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script), is reprinted in Toplumsal Tarih 92 (August 2001): 26-30, as part of an article by Naki Konyali.
7. Turkish Students Correspondence, central files, 1910-1918, Columbia University Archives.
8. The figure of 50,000 is taken from Kemal Karpat, "The Turks in America," Les Annales de l'Autre Islam 3 (1995): 233.
9. In that article, Karpat notes that the United States immigration authorities counted 18,884 Turks entering the U.S. between 1895-1924. Thomas Archdeacon, Becoming American: An Ethnic History (New York, 1983), Table V3, 118-19, gives a higher figure of 22,021 for the period 1899-1924. Our work in reviewing census schedules and other statistics is tending to confirm a number lower than that estimated by Karpat, and it would seem, at this point, that 25,000 "Turks" may be a more accurate estimate.
10. Whether the Turks were the first large group of Muslims to enter the United States is, at this point, a somewhat speculative statement. However, the only other group that might lay claim to this would be Arab Muslims. The literature on early Arab immigration to the United States indicates that the bulk of the early Arab immigration (largely from Syria-Lebanon) was Christian. See for example, Eric J. Hooglund, ed. Crossing the Waters: Arabic Speaking Immigrants in the United States before 1940 (Washington, 1987);
11. and Alixa Naff. Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Carbondale, 1985).
12. Scholars in a variety of fields, particularly sociology, anthropology, and history, have generated a considerable body of new literature on the Muslim experience in the United States since the mid-1980s and particularly since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001. However, very little of that material relates to early, pre-1924, Muslim immigration history. The best work in this area can be found in volumes written or edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad including The Muslims of America (New York, 1991)
13. A Century of Islam in America (Washington, 1986)
14. and Muslim Communities in North America (New York, 1994). The last title is of particular interest as it contains an article on early Turkish immigrant associations in Detroit written by Barbara Bilge. Professor Bilge, an anthropologist recently retired from Eastern Michigan University, conducted extensive interviews with the remaining early Turkish immigrants of Detroit in the 1970s. Her work is invaluable for understanding the structure of what was one of the largest early Turkish settlements in the U.S. and what one might argue was the "seed" for the Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan, now acknowledged to be the largest in the United States.
15. Karpat, "The Turks in America";
16. and Talat Halman, "Turks," in Stephan Thernstrom, et al, eds, Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, MA, 1980), form the scholarly core of works on the early Turks.
17. Frank Ahmed's Turks in America, The Ottoman Turks' Immigrant Experience (Washington, 1993), while unfoot-noted and based, in part, on Ahmed's recollection of his own family history, is very useful and quite accurate.
18. The most recent work on the topic, Rifat N. Bali, Anadolu'dan Yeni Dünya: Amerika'ya İlk Göc Eden Türklerin Yaşam Öyküleri (From Anatolia to the New World: Personal Tales of the First Immigrant Turks in America) (Istanbul, 2004)
19. essentially is constructed out of bits and pieces of earlier works and adds very little new in the way of interpretation. A substantial portion of the Bali book derives from a series of newspaper articles written by Hikmet Feridun Es for the newspaper, Hürriyet. These document his trip through the U.S. in the 1940s and his many meetings with Turks resident there. These may prove quite useful for future research. The term "virgin field" comes from a letter from Kemal Karpet to the author when I first approached him regarding my interest in the subject. Kemal Karpat to John J. Grabowski, March 11, 2002, in the possession of the author. Professor Karpat's work on the Ottoman population and migration and immigration matters concerning the area is the key and core to all future research on this topic. See, for example, Kemal H. Karpat, Ottoman Population, 1830-1914: Demographic and Social Characteristics (Madison, 1985);
20. and "The Ottoman Emigration to America," International Journal of Middle East Studies 17 (1985): 175-209.
21. İşçi became interested in early Turkish immigration to the U.S. when he accompanied his wife, Professor Günseli Sönmez İşçi, to the U.S. on a Fulbright in 1999-2000. We began our collaboration in 2002. Sedat has subsequently made several trips back to the U.S. where he has visited sites in Detroit and New England and identified possible archival sources for work in the topic. İşçi has named this research project the İlktürkler (First Turks) Project. The project's website is www.amerikadakiturkler.org.
22. Işil Acehan, "Outposts of an Empire: Early Turkish Migration to Peabody, Massachusetts" (M.A. thesis, Bilkent University, 2005).
23. See also Işil Acehan, "Eski Dünya'dan, Yeni Dünya'ya: Anadolulu'dan ABD'ye İlk Müslüman Türk Göçü Üzerine," Doǧu Bati 8, no. 32 (2005): 220-38. This article presents a synopsis of the findings presented in the master's thesis.
24. For excellent overviews of the societal changes affecting late Ottoman Turkey, see Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London, 2000);
25. and Stanford Shaw and Ayşe Ezel Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Cambridge, 1977). In regard to the matter of adopting a national "Turkish" identity, one could argue that, although advocated by the intelligentsia, its roots actually lay in the Anatolian heartland from which the immigrants came. Thus the writers and thinkers were, in essence, seeking a true folk identity. This still leaves open the matter of which primary identity those who lived in the heartland chose for themselves - Turk, Muslim, or a resident of a town or district.
26. The millet was the official recognition of a person's peoplehood/ethnicity in the Ottoman Empire (as based on and defined by religious affiliation, viz, Muslim, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, etc.) and also the primary basis of identity. Thus the Turks would have identified with the Muslim millet.
27. Many of the Turks living in Peabody, Massachusetts, gave their place of birth as "Harpoot" (Harput) to the canvasser for the 1920 Federal Census. The official reviewing the schedules crossed that out and replaced it with Turkey. U.S. Federal Census schedules (microfilm) for Peabody, Massachusetts, 1920.
28. The process of "re-identification" began, one might argue, when the ship's purser created the manifest or passenger list. That list provided data demanded by the nation controlling the port of entry.
29. The Turkish Red Crescent society appears to have been the major contact point with the new Republican government for Turks resident in the United States. It was, for instance, through the Red Crescent that American Turks adopted and registered new surnames after the Republic passed the surname law in 1934. This seems to indicate a connection to the reforms taking place in Turkey. The story of Baron Mohammed, a Turkish immigrant who lived the last years of his life in the Greater Cleveland area (see footnote 25), provides one bit of anecdotal evidence. Of what might be considered Ottoman peasant background, Mohammed was remembered by many, including new post-World War II Turkish immigrant doctors who met him, as someone proud of being a "Turk." At one point in the 1950s he even managed to make his way into a reception for the visiting Turkish President, Celal Bayar, at the swank Union Club of Cleveland. However, in the 1930 Federal Census (at which time he was living in Nemacolin, Pennsylvania), his mother tongue is given as Kurdish. Whether this was the answer he gave to the canvasser's question or whether it was arbitrarily assigned to him by the census taker cannot be determined. Yet, this matter hints at the complexity and shifting nature of identity among some of these immigrants. Baron Mohammed Oral History Interview, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.
30. Thomas Archdeacon, Becoming American, Table V3, 118-19. Archdeacon's rate-of-return statistics consider only the period before 1924. It is likely that the overall rate was higher since many Turks are reported to have returned after the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923.
31. See Ahmed, Turks in America, 84-87;
32. and Karpat, "The Turks in America," 234-35. Additionally, the number of returnees may have grown during the Depression.
33. See also Frank Ahmed, Turks in America, 52-56, for additional observations on intermarriage. Ahmed is of Turkish background; both his father and grandfather emigrated from the Ottoman Empire to Peabody, Massachusetts. His grandfather returned, but his father remained and married a woman of French-Canadian ancestry.
34. Both Karpat and Ahmed note the role played by the Turkish-flag ship, Gülcemal, in repatriating Turks. However, the ship made only four voyages to and from New York during 1920-1921, this being prior to the conclusion of the Turkish War of Independence. It has been impossible to document additional voyages after these dates. See John J. Grabowski, "Republican Perceptions: Time and the Gülcemal," in The Turkish Yearbook of International Relations 31 (2000/2), Special Issue on Turkish-American Relations, 31-50. There is a wide belief (see Ahmed for example) that Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) asked Turks to come back and help rebuild the war-torn country. While this seems logical, this author has not seen direct documentary evidence of such a call.
35. Işil Acehan's work on the Turks of Peabody includes a review of several Turkish-language sources relating to missionary activity including Erdel Açikses, Amerikalilarin Harput'daki Misonlerlik Faaliyetleri (Ankara, 2003), an important new overview of the missionary work carried out in Harput. Karpat, Ottoman Population, also cites the Ottoman concern in 1892 about the conversion of Muslims in the United States. The Ottoman Archives in Istanbul contains a series of letters (in French and Osmanlica) dated 1892 and 1893 from Worcester reporting on the condition of Muslims in that city and noting the role of an American missionary, Hitchcock, in directing the Muslims to Worcester. Ottoman Archives, HR.SYS, 69/12 and 69/21.
36. For example, see the manifest for the LaBretagne, sailing from Havre and arriving in New York on July 15, 1907 (available on www.ellisisland.org). The passengers include a number of Turks, Syrians, and Armenians, including both Turks and Armenians from Harput. The Acehan thesis shows Turks, Greeks, and Armenians in Peabody residing in the same boarding house or along the same streets. Acehan, "Outposts," 83-88.
37. See also Ahmed, Turks in America, 78-79. See www.jhsns.net/Peabody.html for a history of the Jewish community of Peabody. That history identifies five Sephardic families who came to the Peabody-Salem area from Turkey in 1906 and another fifteen in 1919.
38. Correspondence, dated April 1894, from the Chicago consulate to the Ottoman Embassy, provides an estimate of approximately six hundred Ottoman subjects resident in the Chicago (Chicago, Hammond, Pullman, Waukegan, Racine, Milwaukee, and St. Louis) area. A list of seventy names is appended to the document. All appear to be Armenian. A list appended to a second document in the series reports eight Muslim Turks, all from Harput. Ottoman Archives, Istanbul, HR.SYS. 54/1.
39. Mehmet Fuad, Amerika'da Türkler ve Gördüklerim (İstanbul, [1925]). This volume recounts Fuad's visit to various American Turkish communities in 1923. His descriptions of many of the communities in Pennsylvania and Ohio indicate that the "Turkish" population was, in large part, Balkan in origin. The obituary notices for many of the "Turks" buried in the Islamic Association plot in Cleveland's Highland Park Cemetery show Balkan rather than Anatolian nativity.
40. See Cleveland Death Index, www.cpl.org; and burial records maintained at Highland Park Cemetery.
41. An example of the vagaries of Balkan Muslim identity is the story of the life of Yasho Yunus. Born in Macedonia in 1886, Yunus was for many years the head of the Association of the Islamic Lodge of Cleveland. In a WPA-produced history, The Peoples of Cleveland (Cleveland, 2000) (originally produced in the late 1930s), Yunus is noted as a leader in the Turkish community. Yet Yunus's son, Malcom, claims his father did not consider himself a Turk, but rather a "Yugoslav." Further complicating the matter is the fact that Yunus listed his place of birth as Jeaovi, Turkey, rather than Yugoslavia, on his social security application in 1936.
42. Yasho Yunus Papers, The Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio.
43. Oral history interview, 2003, with Russell Mohammed, Charlene Keller, and Rosalyn Bankowitz, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio. The three are the children of Baron Mohammed. Born Bayram Mehmet in Palu, Turkey, he immigrated to the United States in 1912 and spent the bulk of his life in Pennsylvania before moving to the Cleveland area after World War II. Charlene Keller remembers accompanying her father to the coffeehouse located in Cleveland's Greek, Bolivar Road neighborhood.
44. See Ahmed, The Turks in America, for comments on intermarriage.
45. It will be challenging to determine what role the returning immigrants played in Turkey's modernization. For example, it has been as yet impossible to determine the average length of stay in the United States. Certainly, one can expect that immigrants who stayed for longer periods of time may have been more influenced by American society and mores. Anecdotal evidence gained by speaking with the grandchildren of returned immigrants seems to indicate that their families were very interested in education and modernity.
46. The U.S. Federal Census schedules are available for the peak period (1900-1930) of Turkish immigration to and residence in the United States. They are an extraordinarily valuable resource, but must be used with caution. Locating "Turks" in the census has been made much easier by on-line genealogical databases such as www.ancestry.com, which allow a global search for anyone listing Turkey as a birthplace. However, the indexing on this database is "hit and miss." For example, the number of Turkish-born individuals that can be garnered by an ancestry.com search of the 1920 census for Cleveland (149) is much less than listed in the official compendium for that census (661). Nevertheless, the indexed names allow one to move directly to the neighborhoods in which the Turks lived and to find those who were not indexed. Identifying who is "Turkish" among all immigrants from the Ottoman Empire usually can be done by observing the name form which is far different from Greek, Armenian, or even Arab name forms. It becomes even easier to identify Turks with the 1910 census when the native language of the resident is listed. But, of course, here caution again must be used as some Greeks and Armenians would have spoken Turkish. Similarly, "Turks" from the Balkans and Greece may not have spoken Turkish. Despite these issues, the census schedules seem to be the key to reconstructing Turkish communities in the U.S.
47. Work done by Diane Ewart Grabowski with the United States Federal Census schedules for Wayne County, Michigan, for 1920 and 1930 has, for example, turned up numerous variants of the name Ali Hassen for both years. Given the problem with name inversion and misspellings, it has been impossible so far to determine, with certainty, whether the same Ali Hassen is identified in both censuses. Age and date of immigration are a possible way to build this link, but they too tend to be reported differently at different times.
48. Ottoman Archives, Istanbul, HR.SYS. 54/1, HR.SYS, 69/12 and 69/21. See endnotes 15 and 18.
49. If such records exist, they likely remain with the department of origin, the Turkish Ministry of the Interior.
50. For a missionary's view of the history of the founding of Robert College see Cyrus Hamlin, Among the Turks (New York, 1877).
51. Joseph Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810-1920 (Minneapolis, 1971), illustrates the link between missionary activity and policy. Some policy matters which were immigrant-related included the issue of dual citizenship and the protections that American citizenship might afford to Ottoman immigrants who returned to the Ottoman Empire. The archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions represent a very rich resource for understanding the origins of all aspects of Ottoman emigration, including that of the Turks. The material at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, is available on microfilm (published by Research Publications, Inc.), while that remaining in Istanbul has not yet been cataloged and awaits extensive use.
52. See also Emrah Şahin, "Errand into the East: A History of Evangelical American Protestant Missionaries and their Missions to Ottoman Istanbul during the Nineteenth Century" (M.A. thesis, Bilkent University, 2004), for an overview of missionary activity within Istanbul during the nineteenth century;
53. and Betul Basaran, "Reinterpreting American Missionary Presence in the Ottoman Empire: American Schools and the Evolution of Ottoman Educational Policies (1820-1908)" (M.A. thesis, Bilkent University, 1997).
54. The book by Fuad, who later adopted the surname Umay, is the richest secondary work relating to the early Turkish immigrants. Additional works include Sabiha Sertel, Roman Gibi 1919-1950 (Istanbul, 1969);
55. Niyazi Berkes, Unutulan Yillar (Istanbul, 1997);
56. and Zekeriya M. Sertel, Hatirladiklarun (İstanbul, 1968). Sabiha Sertel, like Ahmet Emin Yalman, was a student at Columbia University.
57. These are records of branches in Michigan and New Jersey. Both remain in private hands at present.
58. The archival materials that have come to light during this project do not, as yet, have an official home. Much of the material donated by or copied from families in Turkey remains with Sedat İşçi at Ege University. In the United States, materials have begun to be accumulated by the Immigration History Research Center of the University of Minnesota. The IHRC holds a small collection of Frank Ahmed's papers and has expressed a strong interest in building a collection of Turkish materials. E-mail from Rudolph J. Vecoli to John J. Grabowski, February 15, 2005.