Migration and Turkey
through it on the way to Palestine.
32
Yet at the same time, Turkish authorities
would not always allow ships carrying Jewish refugees bound for Palestine to
berth in Turkish ports. This practice led to the Struma incident in February
1942.TheStruma had arrived in Istanbul with its load of about 770 refugees
in December 1941, after breaking down in the Black Sea. When neither the
Turkish nor the British government would accept the refugees, the ship was
towed back to the Black Sea and left adrift. It was subsequently torpedoed,
probably by a Soviet submarine, causing the death of all on board except one
person.
33
During the course of the Second World War many people from
the German-occupied Balkans also sought refuge in Turkey. They included
Bulgarians, Greeks (especially from Greek islands on the Aegean) and Italians
from the Dodecanese islands. There are no public records available for their
number, but according one source there were approximately 67,000 internees
and refugees in Turkey at the end of the war.
34
However, the majority of these
people returned to their countries after the war ended, except for those who
fulfilled the conditions set by the Settlement Law.
Although Turkey’s refugee policy changed significantly after the Second
World War, it nevertheless remained state policy to refuse immigrants who
were not of ‘Turkish descent or culture’. In this period, the Cold War became a
determining factor of Turkish policy. Turkey had become firmly embedded in
the Western Bloc, so it is not surprising that the overwhelming majority of the
refugees came from the Soviet Bloc. In close cooperation with United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Turkey received refugees from
communist countries in Europe, including the Soviet Union. Such refugees,
during their stay in Turkey, enjoyed all the rights provided for in the 1951
Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. However, only a very
small number were allowed to stay on in Turkey, often as a result of marriages
with Turkish nationals. The others moved on to settle in the United States,
Canada and other countries.
Turkey also experienced mass influxes of refugees in 1952, 1988, 1989 and
1991. Those in 1952 and 1989 involved Turks and Pomaks from Bulgaria,
who were permitted to stay and settle in Turkey. On both occasions, the
32 S. J. Shaw, TheJewsoftheOttomanEmpireandtheTurkishRepublic(New York: New York
University Press, 1991), p. 256, puts the number at around 100,000.R.Bali,Devlet’in
Yahudileri ve ‘
¨
oteki’ Yahudi (Istanbul:
˙
Iletis¸im, 2004), p. 171 footnote 18, disagrees and
argues that the numbers were more like 15,000–17,000.
33 R. Bali, Cumhuriyet yıllarında T
¨
urkiye Yahudileri: Bir T
¨
urkles¸tirme ser
¨
uveni (1923–1945)
(Istanbul:
˙
Iletis¸im Yayınları, 1999), pp. 342–56.
34 J. Vernant, The Refugee in the Post-War World (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1953),
p. 244.
187