The Ottoman Crisis in Western Anatolia: Turkey’s Belle Époque and the Transition to a Modern Nation State

Abstract

Emre Erol’s The Ottoman Crisis in Western Anatolia focuses on the county of Foçateyn (the modern-day district of Foça in Izmir), a boomtown of the Aegean region in the 1850s fed through its production of alum, salt, and grains and integration into capitalist world economy. As its economic activities intensified, the demographic structure of the town in the 1860s and 1870s shifted. Foça became a hub for workers, porters, and day laborers, mostly migrants from the Aegean Islands. This economic prosperity, however, was short-lived, interrupted by political crisis and turmoil, which spawned a number of chaotic incidents in Foça in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a result of “the Spring of Organized Chaos”, as Erol calls the expulsion of the Ottoman Greek residents in 1914, Foça became a depopulated ghost town. Erol attempts to uncover the reasons behind this town’s drastic economic and political transition from the Ottoman Empire to the early Republican Era. He does so through an analysis of a variety of primary sources including memoirs, archival sources drawn from the state archives, and oral historical sources.

Keywords

• Ottoman Crisis
• Economic
• Western Anatolia

References

1. Adak, Ufuk (2017). Emre Erol, The Ottoman Crisis in Western Anatolia: Turkey’s Belle Époque and the Transition to a Modern Nation State, London: I.B. Tauris, 2016, xvii + 315 pages. Aurum Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi, 2 (2), 77-78.