Migration and the Construction of National Narratives in Turkey and Kyrgyzstan

As republics formed following the collapse of expansive empires, the Kyrgyz Republic and the Republic of Turkey have each utilized certain historical and cultural narratives as a means of establishing a unified ethnic national identity. In the case of Turkey, the influx of new “Turks” from the forced population exchange with Greece necessitated a unifying historical narrative devoid of Ottoman or Byzantine influence. For the ethnically Kyrgyz, their relatively weak historical ties to their homeland as well as the fluctuating immigration and emigration during the Soviet era meant that the newly independent republic needed a narrative justification for nationhood. For the Turks, the solution to this problem was a “Turkified” ancient history. For the Kyrgyz on the other hand, they found their answer by transforming the epic poem Manas from an old tale told by their grandfathers into a millennium old celebration of Kyrgyz national heritage.

The Republic of Turkey emerged as an independent nation in 1923 after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and subsequent Turkish War of Independence. This independence was accompanied by an extreme sequence of forced migrations and demographic shifts. Following Turkey’s victory over Greece, the Treaty of Lausanne implemented a population exchange which forced all Muslims living in Greece to Turkey, and all Orthodox Christians living in Turkey to Greece. These migrations, although likely incredibly traumatic for migrants going both ways, were seen as a victory for the Republic of Turkey and a reunification of “ethnic Turks.”

However, while the Kemalist government officially identified Muslims from Greece as ethnic Turks, this was not necessarily an accurate label. The separation of Greek and Turkish populations on the basis of religion rather than language or ethnic history has roots in the Ottoman Empire’s millet system. This system for centuries of Ottoman rule divided its population based on whether they were Orthodox Christian or Muslim. For the Ottoman Empire, this division made sense as a way to unite the disparate ethnic groups that made up its empire under an idea of pan-Islamism by specifically excluding non-Muslims. However, the continuation of this system by the Republic of Turkey created a dissonance in identity when it strove to eliminate the ties between religion and the state. If only Muslim immigrants were being invited (or forced) into the country, but the country was not defined by its religion but rather its “Turkishness,” then what did it mean to be Turkish?

For nationalist thinkers in the early Republic of Turkey, the answer to this question was found in what is known as the “Turkish-history thesis.” According to Renee Hirschon, “Turkish nationalist historiography is distinguished by the enormity of the effort to negate the previous existence of non-Turkish populations in the land that eventually became Turkey.” This intellectual process of cleansing the public conception of Turkish history of everything except for Turks began as early as the establishment of the Republic’s capital city. By placing the government in Ankara rather than Istanbul, Republican leadership attempted to put aside the idea that they were the successors of the Ottomans, who were in turn the successors of the Byzantines. Instead, from the historically neutral site of Ankara, they were able to claim a much more ancient lineage back to the Hittites and Sumerians.

While this formation myth of an unbroken chain of proto-Turkish and Turkish people living in Anatolia for over 4,000 years has major historiographical flaws, parts of it have been taught in Turkish schools from when it was conceived in the 1930s until the present day. Despite its major problems both factually and ethically, it does seem to have effectively aided in the creation of a national ethnic identity for the Turkish people following the migration related turmoil of the 20th century.

Turkey’s post-migration national identity was a created foundation myth, but the leading intellectuals of the Kyrgyz Republic took a slightly different path to establishing a nationalist narrative. Although it had been an official republic of the USSR since 1936, Kyrgyzstan’s native economy and culture suffered under Soviet leadership. With collectivization and industrialization projects conducted in Kyrgyzstan and greater Central Asia by the Soviet government, mid-20th century the Kyrgyz economy relied entirely upon Soviet support. As described by Schmidt and Sagynbekova, this dependency led to an influx of Russian and other European Soviet migrants into the country to prop up industrialization efforts. However, as these projects went into decline with the fall and eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union in the late 20th century, these migratory patterns began to flow in the opposite direction. Since its independence in 1991, a huge proportion of Kyrgyz workers have been regularly immigrating to Russia for work in order to support themselves and their families.

With this tradition of reliance on the Russian economy for support, it may have been difficult for the Kyrgyz people to view themselves as a truly independent nation, even after 1991. This disadvantage to the Kyrgyz national identity was compounded by the efforts made by Soviet leadership to suppress any supposedly anti-Soviet culture during their rule of Central Asia. For Kyrgyzstan specifically, this cultural suppression impacted their most renowned piece of art, the oral epic poem of Manas. Sometimes regarded as the world’s longest epic poem ever, the full Manas is over half a million lines long and takes multiple days for a manaschy (bard of the Manas) to recite.

Despite the fact that it was regularly censured and heavily edited by the Soviet government during the mid-20th century, the Manas remained a part of Kyrgyz culture until the 1980’s. At that point, with less direct Soviet influence, Kyrgyz scholars such as Chinghiz Aitmatov began to bring more attention to the epic. By the time that Kyrgyzstan achieved independence in 1991, the Manas had been re-introduced into the popular Kyrgyz consciousness as a defiant, uniquely-Kyrgyz source of pride. Although most work on the subject points to the origins of the Manas in the 17th or 18th century, the newly Kyrgyz government popularized the idea that it dated back to the 900s. As a result, Kyrgyzstan celebrated the 1,000 year anniversary of the Manas in 1995 as the ultimate celebration of their national and ethnic identity. Both the “Turkish-history thesis” and the reinvigorated epic of Manas served to unite the Republic of Turkey and the Kyrgyz Republic under their own shared ethnic identities, no matter how accurate these constructed narratives really are.

Bibliography

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Keyder, Çağlar. “The consequences of the exchange of populations for Turkey.” Crossing the Aegean: an appraisal of the 1923 compulsory population exchange between Greece and Turkey (2003): 39-52.

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Schmidt, Matthias, and Lira Sagynbekova. “Migration past and present: changing patterns in Kyrgyzstan.” Central Asian Survey 27, no. 2 (2008): 111-127.