An Erasmus student, Christianne J.J. Van de Weg conducted an oral history interview with a 22-year-old member of a family that had been forced to migrate from Greece to Turkey. This research is a pretty comprehensive one, focusing on the mission of the third generation within the family, who learned Turkish as a native speaker, thus passing the “language barrier” for the whole family.
Christianne: “This paper is written for the course Oral History, which I took in the Spring Semester 2009 at Sabancı University in Istanbul. For this course we were required to do an oral history interview with a third generation immigrant in Turkey. As a foreigner, finding my informant caused a number of difficulties for me, but in the end I found help from a fellow Turkish student at the university. I will introduce him and his relatives shortly.”
“My informant spoke under the pseudonym of ‘Miloves Hodzic’ and is a 22 year old Political Science student who was born in Izmir. The history of his family is particularly interesting, because the relatives on his father’s side were Turks living in Greece. On his mother’s side, on the other hand, they came from the Sandzak region in Serbia. All grandparents came to Turkey at a very young age, so any past identity they did have came from their parents. Which in the end makes my informant a fourth generation immigrant if you are really meticulous.”
“Miloves”: “If my grandfather would have had the opportunity to be both (Turkish and Bosnian) without the acts of terror I think he would have agreed to it. Even though I don’t know what he thinks about this issue since he died last year. But I am sure that he didn’t like the attitude of separating yourself from society because of your identity. My grandfather prioritised peace, no stealing, no terrorism and a strong army etc. He voted for the nationalist party because he thought that that would be better to make a strong country.”
To listen to “Miloves”: